LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
FT^~ — 

Chap Copyright No 



Shelf.. 




UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE WORKS OF 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 
ILibtarg JEMtlon 

Volume VI 



A NEW ENGLAND BOYHOOD 
BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



A New England 
Boyhood 



AND OTHER 



Bits of Autobiography 



BY 



k^ 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 




BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1900 



rv 



TWO COPXES HECEIVEo 

t¥ftR9H900 

""fffttr of Copyfj^jhj^ 



56161 

Copyright, i8g3, 
By Cassell Publishing Company 

Copyright, igoo. 

By Little, Brown, and Company 



All rights reserved 



SECOND COr'Y, 






^ntbctsitg ^rrss 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S. A 



PREFACE 

TO THE EDITION OF 1900 

IT seems to me almost by accident that I 
have ever written the pages of autobiography 
which the reader will find in this volume. He 
will see that they have been gathered from many 
different sources ; they have been written under 
various conditions for different classes of readers, 
and they make no pretence, therefore, at unity of 
method or literary style. 

But I do not like to leave the sketch of " Boy- 
hood " which was published under the title of "A 
New England Boyhood," as if my life ended when I 
was seventeen years old. That sketch, as the reader 
will see, was written for the Atlantic Monthly, at 
request of its editor Mr. Scudder, to be, in its 
way, a companion for the admirable study called 
" A New England Girlhood," by my charming kins- 
woman Miss Lucy Larcom. It ends with the 
day when I took my first degree at Harvard Col- 
lege. Before and after it was written, I had fur- 
nished one and another account of experiences in 
my life, at the request of one or another editor, or 
other friends. 



vi Preface 

In preparing the volume now in the reader's 
hands, it has proved possible to rescue these narra- 
tives from the dust of whatever graves they were 
buried in, to arrange them in chronological order, 
and then to connect them by a few stitches, or, 
shall one say, by a few pair of hooks and eyes. 

There are few people who do not like to talk 
about themselves, if they are approached with 
sufficient craft by listeners who want to hear, 
and I find that almost always the fragment of 
autobiography which a man has written, " for his 
children," or " for his grandchildren " is the most 
entertaining part of the published history of his 
life. I notice also that after a man has written 
one such autobiography, you might catch him 
again, when he did not remember much of it, and 
he would write another, quite as entertaining, but 
quite different from the first. I know very well 
that something like this would happen, say if I 
should write the " New England Boyhood " over 
again this winter. But this I shall not do. I do 
not even want to do it. I have only to ask the 
reader to remember, as he reads, that the state- 
ment, opinion, or hopes of a man at one date in 
his life may rightfully differ from those written 
down at another date. Mr. Emerson has taught 
us all, if we did not know it before, that for any 
man who lives long, there is no desire so foolish, 
or so mean as the desire for Consistency. 

How well I have told my part of the story, I 
cannot pretend to say. But I may say, that the 



Preface 



Vll 



years which have passed since 1822, when I 
uttered my first appeal to a waiting world, have 
been crowded full of interest. And I may add, 
that the Massachusetts in which most of my active 
life has been spent, has done her full share in mak- 
ing these years interesting. I do not think that 
people of our race have much of that faculty, 
so hard to describe, of making their memoirs 
interesting. For that faculty we have to go to 
France. But whoever has lived here in New 
England in the last seventy or eighty years has 
enough to tell, if only he knows how. 

EDWARD E. HALE. 
RoxBURY, Mass., December 2, 1899. 



CONTENTS 

A New England Boyhood p^^^ 

Introduction xi 

Chapter 

I. 'Tis Seventy Years Since i 

II. School Life 8 

III. The Swimming School » 40 

IV. Life at Home 42 

V. Out of Doors 64 

VI. The Books in the Attic 92 

VII. Social Relations 103 

VIII. The World near Boston 137 

IX. The World beyond Boston 156 

X. At College 166 

Sixty Years of My Life 

Wanderjahre 211 

Freedom in Texas 221 

Appendix 233 

Boston in the Forties 239 

Worcester for Ten Years 255 

New England in the Colonization of Kansas . . 257 



X Contents 

Page 

A Church in the War 289 

Editorial Duty 313 

Literary and Editorial Work 336 

Harvard Revisited 340 

The Ministry of the Gospel and Permanent 

Peace 365 

A Permanent Tribunal 399 

The High Court of America 401 

A Permanent Tribunal 406 

The High Court of Nations 417 

A Permanent Tribunal 435 

The Mt. Vernon Dinner-Party 449 

The Old Diplomacy, and the Permanent 

Tribunal 460 

The Emperor of Russia and His Circular . . 474 
Matunuck 

My Summer Home on the Piazza 490 



INTRODUCTION 

TO "A NEW ENGLAND BOYHOOD" 

A CHARMING writer, Miss Lucy Larcom, 
published a few years ago a charming 
book called "A New England Girlhood." She 
described in it her own early life, first in Beverly, 
opposite Salem on the seashore of Massachusetts, 
with its gardens and beaches and fishing boats; 
then in Lowell in its infant days, with its river and 
waterfalls and Arcadian cotton factories. 

Mr. Horace Scudder, editor of the Atlantic 
Monthly, was as much attracted by this pleasant 
book as the rest of us. It suggested to him the 
possibility of another book, which should deal with 
the same years, now becoming mythical, as a New 
England boy saw life in the little New England 
city of those days — the only city of New Eng- 
land which took that name before 1826, excepting 
the city of Vergennes in Vermont, that of Hartford 
in Connecticut, and in old days York in Maine. 

Quite leaving Hartford and York out, in my 
earliest days it was always a joke at home, if any- 
one spoke of Boston as the only city, for some 
one to say, " Boston and Vergennes." Vergennes 
was incorporated in 1788, by the legislature of 



xii Introduction 

Vermont, which was then an independent nation, 
not belonging either to the Confederacy of the 
United States or sharing in the dehberations for 
the new constitution, 

Mr. Scudder asked me to furnish some chapters, 
with the attractive title of " A New England Boy- 
hood," from my own memories, in such form that 
they might be published in the Atlantic MoiitJily. 
And this I was glad to do. Those chapters, pub- 
lished in that magazine in 1892, make more than 
half of the book now in the reader's hands. 

I have to say this by way of introduction, 
because here is the only excuse for what else 
seems the conceit of introducing little bits of per- 
sonal experience into my story, of no earthly 
value to anybody but myself and my children, 
excepting as they illustrate the simplicity and 
ease of a phase of New England life, which has 
now wholly passed away. I do not flatter myself 
that I have succeeded in presenting to the reader 
the simplicity and the dignity of that life, so curi- 
ously combined as simplicity and dignity were. 
Those people, in the little seaport of Boston, lived 
and moved as if they were people of the most 
important city of the world. What is more, they 
meant to make Boston the purest, noblest, and 
best city in the world. And they lived there in 
some forms of social life which would have become 
princes of sixty-four quarterings, with some which 
were identical with those of the log-cabin. Every 
man of them was an American, and believed to 



Introduction xiii 

the sole of his feet that there was no fit govern- 
ment for men but that of a repubhc. All the 
same, their leaders, men and women, were digni- 
fied, elegant, and gracious in their bearing and 
manner ; and there was no prince in the world 
who better understood the bearing and the cus- 
toms of gentlemen and gentlewomen. 

It was a good place in which to be born, and a 
good place in which to grow to manhood. 

From 1630, when Boston was founded by an 
important branch of Winthrop's colony, to 1S26, 
when these reminiscences begin, it had grown, 
slowly and not very regularly, from a little hamlet 
of settlers, sick and half starved, to a brisk com- 
mercial town of about forty-five thousand people. 
There is no better description than Mr. Emerson's, 
which I heard him read, fresh from his own notes, 
on the platform of Faneuil Hall, on the centennial 
of the Boston Tea-Party, December 16, 1873. It 
was said that he had written the last verses in the 
train as he rode from Concord. The notes in his 
hand were on various bits of paper, and I believe 
that the poem was born on that day. 

The rocky nook, with hill-tops three, 

Looked eastward from the farms, 
And twice each day the flowing sea 

Took Boston in its arms. 

The wild rose and the barberry thorn 

Hung out their summer pride, 
Where now on heated pavements worn 

The feet of millions stride. 



xiv Introduction 

Fair rose the planted hills behind 

The good town on the bay, 
And where the western hills declined 

The prairie stretched away. 

Each street leads downward to the sea, 
Or landward to the west. 

The first certain description of the place is that 
in Bradford : " We came into the bottom of the bay ; 
but being late we anchored and lay in the shallop, 
not having seen any of the people. The next 
morning we put in for the shore. There we found 
many lobsters that had been gathered together." 

This camping ground is Copp's Hill at the very 
northern end of the peninsula. The lobsters were 
taken near the landing of the ferry, which afterward 
took men to Charlestown. If Tom, Dick, and 
Harry had been left to their own devices, if no 
paternal or fraternal government had protected 
their industries and done better for them than 
nature did, if successive generations had been left 
to do what nature bade, as is now the theory of 
the " let alones," making head again in the midst 
of our matchless prosperity — a few hundred of 
us, who had survived in the struggle for existence, 
would be trapping lobsters at the North End to- 
day. Where the other hundred thousand people 
would be, who now inhabit the old peninsula, I do 
not know — or, indeed, if they would have been at 
all. This I know, that no considerable body of 
men had ever inhabited it before 1630. 



Introduction xv 

A peninsula it was ; but no geographer in his 
senses would give that name now to the bulging 
cape which has expanded on either side of the old 
almost island. At high tides, in gales, the water 
washed across what was then called the Neck, and 
is still called so by old-fashioned people. Three 
hills, of which the highest was 138 feet high from 
the sea, broke the surface of the peninsula, and of 
these the top of the highest was broken again by 
three smaller hills. This highest hill is Beacon 
Hill. Copp's Hill was at the north, and Fort Hill 
on the east. For the convenience of trade Fort 
Hill has been entirely removed, and a little circular 
bit of greensward marks the place where, in my 
boyhood, was a hill fifty feet high. 

In old days a canal was cut across the town, 
separating the Copp's Hill elevation from those 
south of it. A tidal mill was arranged here, by 
retaining the water at high tide in the mill-pond, 
and letting it dribble out when the tide had fallen. 
The average rise and fall of the tide in Boston is 
about ten feet, so that this contrivance gave pov\'er 
enough for grinding corn when there was corn to 
grind. The mill-pond was filled up about the 
period to which the reminiscences in this book 
belong. 

If this book should stray into the hands of per- 
sons who do not know the physical Boston of 
to-day, or the physical Boston of history, it may 
be worth while, " for the greater caution," as the 
lawyers say, to give an outline map of both. In 



xvi Introduction 

the sketch in the margin the white nucleus repre- 
sents the Boston which Bradford found, and where 
we should have been catching lobsters had there 
been no paternal government or other govern- 
ment, until to-day. The outline of the larger 
cape, as I have called it, is the outline of Boston 
now, when what we called the " flats " have been 
filled in by successive improvements — if improve- 
ments they are. Any person, who desires to 
know my opinion on such improvements, may 
consult the study I have made on similar subjects 
in my book called " Sybaris." I am, however, an 
optimist, and after a thing has been done I accept 
it. I dictate these words as I lie on my back on 
a comfortable sofa in a comfortable room in the 
vestry of the church which stands where, in boy- 
hood, I could have skated, or could have caught 
smelts for the next day's breakfast. For the tem- 
perature outside, at this moment, is ten degrees 
above zero, a temperature which was very favor- 
able for the catching of smelts in those days. 

Politically or socially, the period between 1820 
and 1835 belongs to the period when Boston was 
turning to internal commerce and the develop- 
ment of manufacture, and was relinquishing that 
maritime commerce which had created her. The 
Southern and Western leaders of the country, not 
disinclined to thwart the maritime industries of 
New England, had attempted to build up what 
Mr. Clay called " the American system " of home 
manufacture. So soon as this system established 



Introduction xvii 

itself, the New Englanders adapted themselves to 
the new conditions, and set up their manufac- 
tories on the borders of their streams — Pawtucket, 
VValtham, Lowell, and, afterwards, Manchester, 
Lawrence, and Holyoke came into being. The 
necessity of closer communication with the interior 
was as distinctly felt in New England as in the 
Middle States. The Middlesex Canal, an elabo- 
rate system of turnpikes, and, later yet, the present 
system of railroads were established. But in the 
year 1830 Boston still retained a large East Indian 
and European commerce. It is interesting to see 
how largely the exports were still products of the 
forests and the fisheries. 

And, not to smirch the pages of this little book 
with any of the ashes of theological controversy 
which is long since dead, it may be mentioned 
that, in the years between 1820 and 1840, Boston 
was the centre of theological discussion, which 
undoubtedly greatly quickened the religious life 
of New England. In those years there was a 
certain expectation of a speedy improvement, not 
to say revolution, in social order, such as men do 
not often experience. Dr. Channing was preach- 
ing the gospel of the divinity of man. Dr. 
Tuckerman, Frederick Gray, Charles Barnard, and 
Robert Cassie Waterston, with others, were intro- 
ducing practical illustrations of improvement. 
There was plenty of money, and the rich men of 
Boston really meant that here should be a model 
and ideal city. The country was prosperous; 

b 



xviii Introduction 

they were prosperous, and they looked forward to 
a noble future. 

At the same time they had the advantage of 
having a university close under their lee, which 
they were themselves managing. They had started 
their Athen?eum, with collections of pictures and 
statues, and a good library. They had a good 
deal of leisure ; and a certain interest, not wholly 
the interest of dilettanti, in fine arts and literature, 
gave distinction to their little town. 

Into such a community it was my good fortune 
to be born, on the morning of the 3d of April, 
1822. 

I do not attempt anything so ambitious as an 
autobiography. But a man sees with his own 
eyes, and a boy even more than a man ; and what 
I remember of a New England boyhood is what 
mine was, not what anyone else lived through in 
the same time. There will be a certain conveni- 
ence, then, to the reader if he knows a little of 
the household and family in which that boyhood 
was spent which in these chapters is described. 

In the ship Lion, in the voyage of Winthrop's 
fleet, came to Boston Robert Hale, who was, I 
suppose, of the Hales of Kent. Searching in the 
wills of that time in Canterbury, in Kent, I found 
this : — 

7. " To my Sonne John Hales, five pounds and 
my best silver guilt sword, yet nevertheless and on 
this condition" — that he do not intercept the 
execution of the rest of the will. 



Introduction xix 

And I have a fancy that that son was cut off 
with a " guilt sword " because he was a Puritan, 
while the rest of the Hales, or Haleses, were very- 
High Church. So High Church have they been 
in later times that it was one of them, Sir James 
Hales, who accompanied James H. into exile. 
Somehow I connect him with the throwing the 
Great Seal into the Thames. Within my mem- 
ory Hales Place, near Canterbury, has become the 
seat of a Jesuit school for training priests. I sup- 
pose Robert Hale to have been of his blood. 

This Robert Hale is called a blacksmith, and he 
settled at Charlestown, opposite Boston. He 
seems to have had the taste for surveying or engi- 
neering which crops out in alternate generations 
in the family. He was of the party which was sent 
to VVinnipiseogee to run the northern line of Mas- 
sachusetts. The stone which they set there is to 
be seen to this day. He married Joanna Cutter. 
He sent his son John Hale to Harvard College, 
where he was the fourth in social rank of his class 
of eight. He became the minister of Beverly, is 
the John Hale who went to Quebec as chaplain 
and was taken prisoner, and the John Hale of the 
Salem witchcraft. A missal given him by a Catho- 
lic priest in Quebec is in the library of Harvard 
College to this day. He was the grandfather, by 
his oldest son, of King Hale, as Robert Hale (H. 
C, 1686) was familiarly called in Beverly; and by 
his fourth son, Samuel, was grandfather of my 
father's grandfather, Richard Hale, who moved to 



XX Introduction 

Coventry, Conn., and died there in 1802. This 
Richard Hale was father of Captain Nathan Hale of 
Revolutionary history, and of Enoch Hale, my 
grandfather, alluded to in chapter vii. of this book. 

In 1636 Richard Everett, or Everard, appears 
in Watertown, and afterwards in Springfield and 
Dedham. In Dedham he died. From him came 
a line of farmers, who are called captain, deacon, 
and so on till we come to Ebenezer Everett of 
Tiot, now called Norwood, formerly South Ded- 
ham. He was father of Rev, Oliver Everett (H. 
C, 1772), who was minister of the New South 
Church in Boston, and was my grandfather on my 
mother's side. 

For my father, Nathan Hale, oldest son of Rev. 
Enoch Hale above, on a day to be marked with 
vermilion with me and mine, namely, September 
5, 1 8 16, married Sarah Preston Everett, my 
mother, daughter of Rev. Oliver Everett. On 
that day she was twenty years old ; he was thirty- 
two. 

It is pity of pities that we never made him write 
" A New England Boyhood " as he saw it. For 
he was born in 1784, the year after the peace with 
England, He grew up in the very purest condi- 
tions of the simplest and, indeed, the best life of 
New England. His father had been for eight 
years the minister of a frontier town, Westhampton, 
in the days when the minister was chosen by the 
town in open town meeting, was paid by the town, 
and regarded himself as personally responsible 



Introduction xxi 

for the moral and spiritual life of everybody in the 
town. 

Hoeing corn or potatoes one day in the summer 
of iSoo my father, a boy of sixteen, was called into 
his father's study, where he found Dr. Fitch, then 
the president of Williams College, which had been 
established as a college seven years before. Dr. 
Fitch had stopped in a journey across country, to 
accept the hospitalities of the parsonage. The 
boy was told to show Dr. Fitch how well he could 
read Latin ; then he read to him from the Greek 
Testament, and Dr. Fitch said he was ready to 
enter Williams College. His father and he had 
not expected that he would enter until the next 
year. But this fortunate visit of the president 
carried him to Williamstown that summer, and he 
graduated there in the class of 1804. 

He and the other boys from that region used to 
ride across Berkshire County on horseback when 
the college terms began. A younger boy drove 
the horses back in a drove, and, when vacation 
came, took them to the college again for the stu- 
dents to ride back upon. A part of the road was 
a turnpike where tolls were collected. When they 
approached the gate they would all dismount, and 
on foot drive the horses in front of them, and 
demand the right of passing at the rate for a drove 
of horses or cattle. Nothing, as they said, was 
said about saddles or bridles. When I asked once 
if the toll-keeper submitted meekly to this, I was 
told that they generally had to pay the full toll, 



xxii Introduction 

but that the tollman expected to treat them to 
cider all round. 

The college was divided into two societies — the 
Philomathian and the Philotechnian. I think the 
latter exists in Williamstown in some form still. 
I have seen the records of debates : " Ques- 
tion, Whether the purchase of Louisiana is desir- 
able. Decided in the negative, 17 to i." For 
they were high and hot Federalists. 

I have my father's part when he graduated. It 
is on the improvements in social order made in 
the last fifty years. 

So soon as he left college he engaged as tutor 
in the family of John J. Dickinson in Troy, not far 
from Williamstown. But he went home first, and 
on his way to Troy went to the city of New York 
for the first time. The population was only about 
seventy-five thousand. It was three years before 
Fulton's Clermont, his first steamboat, went up the 
Hudson, and the tradition in our family is that my 
father went up the river in a sloop to Troy, was a 
fortnight in going, and read through Gibbon's 
" Decline and Fall " on the way. 

Judging from his accomplishments Williams 
College must have done its work well. He read 
Latin well and with pleasure to the end of his life. 
He did not keep up his Greek with the same in- 
terest, but he was an accurate Greek scholar. He 
was a mathematician of high rank in the mathe- 
matics of those days, and was afterward quite the 
peer in those lines of the engineers with whom he 



Introduction xxiii 

worked on the great public works of which he had 
the charge. He studied some Hebrew in college, 
and could always read a little. I asked him once 
if this was with any thought of being a minister, 
but he said, " No, but there was nothing else to 
study." He had to learn his French and German 
afterward, and did. I think that in my boyhood 
there were perhaps more German books in our 
house than in any other house in Boston. But that 
is saying very little ; as late as 1843 I could buy 
no German books, even in Pennsylvania, but 
Goethe and Schiller and the Lutheran hymn-book. 
After a year in Troy he received the appoint- 
ment of preceptor in mathematics in Exeter 
Academy in New Hampshire. He crossed 
Massachusetts to Boston on his way to Exeter. 
Plere is a memorandum of the way in which this 
was done : 

The arrangement of the stages was that if the stages 
coming from Springfield and Northampton had more 
passengers than could go on one stage some of them had 
to stop ; and those who got on last were the ones who 
had to stop. 

I arrived at Brookfield at night, having left North- 
ampton in the morning. The person who had come the 
shortest distance was a lady. She was in great distress 
that she could not go on. I had a sort of desire to stay 
there to see Howe and Henshaw, but I should not have 
thought of staying a day but to let this lady go on. 

At Exeter, in the charming society of that place, 
he met the Peabodys and Alexander Hill Everett, 



xxiv Introduction 

who was the other " preceptor," the preceptor of 
Greek and Latin, He graduated at Harvard in 
1806. These two young men became very fond 
of each other, and when, in 1808 my father deter- 
mined to leave Exeter and come to Boston to 
study law, he became acquainted with all Mr. 
Everett's Boston friends. 

Meanwhile, when he was twelve years old, my 
mother had been born, in Dorchester, now a part 
of the municipality of Boston. Her father, in deli- 
cate health, had left his charge in 1792. Her 
mother was a Boston girl, one of the daughters 
of Alexander Sears Hill and Mary Richey of Santa 
Cruz, The tradition was that Alexander Sears 
Hill had gone to Philadelphia for a milder climate 
in winter, had fallen in love with Mary Richey, and 
that they had married without the knowledge of 
their parents. A handsome couple they were, as 
the full-length portraits by Copley attest to this 
day. They both died young, I have the love-let- 
ters which passed between Lucy Hill and Oliver 
Everett; it was a happy marriage until his death, 
but he died in consumption in 1802. After this 
the family lived sometimes in the North End of 
Boston, sometimes in the old house in Dorchester. 
In 18 12 Edward Everett, the third son, was or- 
dained minister of Brattle Street Church in 
Boston. He was not married — was, indeed, 
but twenty years old. His mother and sister 
moved into the parsonage in Court Street, 
where are now the offices of Adams Express. 



Introduction xxv 

Mr. Everett left that church in the year 1815, 
and my grandmother and her family established 
themselves in a house in Bumstead Place — a 
"court" which exists no longer — and there my 
mother was married. 

The newly married couple lived first in Ash- 
burton Place, then called Somerset Court, in a 
house now standing. A year or two after they 
removed to Tremont Street to a house which has 
been absorbed by Parker's Hotel, the second from 
where the Tremont Theatre was built in 1827. 
Here I was born. The family afterwards lived 
at the corner of School Street in a house which 
also has been absorbed by Parker's. In 1828 we 
removed to No. i Tremont Place, a house still 
standing; and in 1833 to one of Mr. Andrews's 
houses in Central Court, a property now covered 
by Jordan & Marsh's, just behind where old Judge 
Sewall lived most of his hfe. It is in the four 
houses last named that the scenery of the home 
life described in these chapters is to be placed. 



To this introduction, written in 1893, I need 
only add a few words in 1899. 

Like other people interested in the subject, I 
now suppose that we were all mistaken, who sup- 
posed, with Dr. Young and the older writers, that 
Bradford landed at and ate his lobsters at Copp's 
Hill. M. C. F. Adams has shown that the bluff 



xxvi Introduction 

here described was that at Squantum. There is 
no reference to the landing of any man on this 
peninsula before William Blaxton. We do not 
know when he landed. We only know that he 
lived here. 

The chapters of " A New England Boyhood," 
first printed in 1893, bring up the biographical nar- 
rative to 1839. I^or sixty years between that date 
and this, I add, in this edition, several papers, writ- 
ten and printed since then, which are, in a way, 
biographical. 

EDWARD E. HALE. 

July, 1899. 



A New England Boyhood 

CHAPTER I 
't is seventy years since 

THE reader and I ought not to begin with- 
out my reminding him that the Boston of 
which I am to write was very different from the 
Boston of to-day. In 1825 Boston was still a large 
country town. I think someone has called it 
a city of gardens ; but that someone may have 
been I. As late as 18 17, in a description of 
Boston which accompanied a show which a 
Frenchman had made by carving and painting the 
separate houses, it was said, with some triumph, 
that there were nine blocks of buildings in the 
town. This means that all the other buildings 
stood with windows or doors on each of the four 
sides, and in most instances with trees, or perhaps 
little lanes, between ; as all people will live when 
the Kingdom of Heaven comes. To people in this 
neighborhood to-day, I may say that the upper 
part of the main street in Charlestown gives a 
very good idea of what the whole of Washington 
Street south of Winter Street was then. And, by 



2 A New England Boyhood 

the way, Washington Street was much more often 
called Main Street than by its longer name. 

The reader must imagine, therefore, a large, 
pretty country town, where stage-coaches still 
clattered in from the country, and brought all 
the strangers who did not ride in their own 
chaises. Large stables, always of wood, I think, 
provided for the horses thus needed. I remem- 
ber, as I write, Niles's stable in School Street, 
a large stable in Bromfield Street, afterward 
Streeter's, the stables of the Marlborough Hotel 
in Washington Street, and what seemed to us very 
large stables in Hawley Street — all in the very 
heart of the town, and on a tract which cannot be 
more than twelve acres. When, in 1829, it was 
reported that the new Tremont House was to have 
no special stables for its guests, the announcement 
excited surprise almost universal; and to us chil- 
dren the statement that there was to be a tavern, 
or a hotel, without a sign, was still more extra- 
ordinary. We were used to seeing swinging signs 
on posts in front of the taverns. Thus I remem- 
ber " The Indian Queen " in Bromfield Street, 
"The Bunch of Grapes" in State Street, "The 
Lamb " I think where the Adams House now is, 
" The Lion " where the Boston Theatre is, and 
nearly opposite these the Lafayette Tavern. This 
means that large pictures of an Indian queen, a 
bunch of grapes, a lamb, a lion, and of Lafayette 
swung backward and forward in the wind. There 
was a sign in front of the Marlborough Tavern, 



A New England Boyhood 3 

and one nearly opposite, south of Milk Street, but 
I do not remember what these were. All these 
inns would now be thought small. They were 
then called taverns, and to New Englanders 
seemed very large. Of course they were large 
enough for their purpose. When I was nine or 
ten years old my father, who was thought to be a 
fanatic as a railroad prophet, offered in Faneuil 
Hall the suggestion that if people could come 
from Springfield to Boston in five hours an 
average of nine people would come every day. 
This prophecy was then considered extravagant. 
I have told the story, in the Introduction, of his 
coming to Boston for the first time, in 1805, when 
the Northampton passengers joined the Spring- 
field passengers at Brookfield. There was room 
in the carriage for six only. He therefore gave 
up his seat to a lady who had pressing duties, and 
waited in Brookfield twenty-four hours to take his 
chances for the next stage. 

The more important business streets of this 
town of Boston were paved in the middle with 
round stones from the neighboring beaches, then 
as now called cobble-stones — I do not know why ; 
but an accomplished friend, who reads this in man- 
uscript, says that the lapstone on which a cobbler 
stretches his leather is a cobble-stone. I recom- 
mend this etymology to Dr. Murray and Dr. 
Whitney. The use of bricks for sidewalks was 
just coming in, but generally the sidewalks were 
laid with flat slates or shales from the neighbor- 



4 A New England Boyhood 

hood, which were put down in any shape they 
happened to take in spHtting, without being 
squared at the corners. Bromfield Street, Winter 
Street, Summer Street, and Washington Street 
(old Marlborough Street) between School and 
Winter seem to us now to be narrow streets, but 
they have all been widened considerably within 
my memory. Bromfield Street was called Brom- 
field's Lane. 

On the other hand, so far as I remember the 
houses themselves and the life in them, every- 
thing was quite as elegant and finished as it is 
now. Furniture was stately, solid, and expen- 
sive. I use chairs, tables, and a sideboard in 
my house to-day, which are exactly as good 
now as they were then. Carpets, then of Eng- 
lish make, covered the whole floor, and were 
of what we should now call perfect quality. 
In summer, by the way, in all houses of which 
I knew anything, these carpets were always 
taken up, and India mattings substituted in 
the " living-rooms." Observe that very few 
houses were closed in summer. Dress was cer- 
tainly as elegant and costly as it is now; so 
were porcelain, glass, table linen, and all table 
furniture. In the earlier days of which I write, 
a decanter of wine would invariably have stood 
on a sideboard in every parlor, so that a glass 
of wine could readily be offered at any moment 
to any guest. All through my boyhood it 
would have been matter of remark if, when 



A New England Boyhood • 5 

a visitor made an evening call, something to 
eat or drink was not produced at nine o'clock. 
It might be crackers and cheese, it might be 
mince pie, it might be oysters or cold chicken. 
But something would appear as certainly as 
there would be a fire on the hearth in winter. 
Every house, by the way, was warmed by open 
fires ; and in every kitchen cooking was done 
by an open fire. I doubt if I ever saw a stove 
in my boyhood except in a school or an office. 
Anthracite coal was first tried in Boston in 
1824. Gas appeared about the same time. I 
was taken, as a little boy, to see it burning 
in the shops in Washington Street, and to 
wonder at an elephant, a tortoise, and a cow, 
which spouted burning gas in one window. 
Gas was not introduced into dwelling-houses 
until Pemberton Square was built by the 
Lowells, Jacksons, and their friends, in the years 
1835, 1836, and later. It was a surprise to every- 
one when Papanti introduced it in his new Pa- 
panti's Hall. To prepare for that occasion the 
ground-glass shades had a little rouge shaken 
about in the interior, that the white gaslight might 
not be too unfavorable to the complexion of the 
beauties below. Whether this device is still 
thought necessary in ballrooms I do not know; 
but I suggest it as a hint to the wise. 

A handsome parlor then, differed from a hand- 
some parlor now, mostly in the minor matters of 
decoration. The pictures on the walls were few, 



6 A New England Boyhood 

and were mostly portraits. For the rest, mirrors 
were large and handsome. You would see some 
copies from well-known paintings in European gal- 
leries, and any one who had an Allston would be 
glad to show it. But I mean that most walls were 
bare. In good houses, if modern, the walls of par- 
lors would invariably be painted of one neutral tint ; 
but in older houses there would be paper hangings, 
perhaps of landscape patterns. The furniture of 
a parlor would generally be twelve decorous heavy 
chairs, probably hair-seated, with their backs against 
the walls ; a sofa which matched them, also with its 
back against the wall ; and a heavy, perhaps 
marble-topped centre table. There might be a 
rocking-chair in the room also ; but, so far as I re- 
member, other easy-chairs, scattered as one chose 
about a room, were unknown. 

Try to recall, dear reader, or to imagine, the con- 
ditions of a town without any railroads, and without 
any steam navigation beyond fifteen miles. The 
first steamboat in Boston harbor went to Nahant 
and back again, about 1826. The first steam rail- 
way ran trains to Newton, nine miles, in 1833. 
Please to remember also that everybody lived in 
Boston the year round, excepting a handful of 
rich people who had country places in Dorchester, 
Roxbury, Newton, Brookline, Watertown, Waltham, 
Brighton, Cambridge, Charlestown, or Medford, 
accessible by a horse and chaise. What we call 
buggies were unknown, and a gentleman and lady 
would certainly ride in a chaise, which was not the 



A New England Boyhood 7 

English chaise, but a two-wheeled covered vehicle, 
hung on C-springs. In such a town the supplies 
of food, unless brought from the immediate neigh- 
borhood, came from the seaboard or the Western 
rivers in sloops or schooners. We drew our flour 
from points as far south as Richmond. I remem- 
ber that, in more than one winter, when my grand- 
mother, in Westhampton, had sent us a keg or two 
of home apple-sauce, the sloop which brought the 
treasure was frozen up in Connecticut River below 
Hartford, so that it was four or five months before 
we hungry children enjoyed her present. Great 
wagons with large teams of horses brought from the 
interior such products as did not come in this way. 
For these horses and wagons there were, on 
" the Neck " and beyond, great sheds and stables. 
The country teamster left his horses and his load 
there while he came into town to make sure where 
it was to be delivered. To pick up the stray corn 
which was scattered in these sheds great flocks of 
pigeons congregated, of whom a wretched handful 
survive to this day. I mention these little details 
to give some idea of the country fashion of our 
lives. Two or three weeks out of town in sum- 
mer was a large allowance of vacation. Nobody 
dreamed of closing a church in summer. The 
school vacation was a fortnight and three days 
in August, to which, in later days, was added 
first one week, and then two weeks in June. The 
summer break-up which now divides everybody's 
Boston year was then wholly unknown. 



A New England Boyhood 



CHAPTER II 

SCHOOL LIFE 

After studying with great care Mr. Howell's 
" Boy's Town " and Miss Larcom's " New Eng- 
land Girlhood," I have determined not to follow 
a strict order of time. For better, for worse, 
I will throw in together in one chapter a set of 
school memories which range from about 1824 for 
ten years. At my own imprudent request, not to 
say urgency, I was sent to school with two sisters 
and a brother, older than I, when I was reckoned 
as about two years old. The school was in an 
old-fashioned wooden house which fronted on a 
little yard entered from Summer Street. We 
went up one flight of narrow stairs, and here the 
northern room of the two bedrooms of the house 
was occupied by Miss Susan Whitney for her 
school, and the southern room, w^hich had win- 
dows on Summer Street, by Miss Ayres, of whom 
Miss Whitney had formerly been an assistant. 
Miss Whitney afterwards educated more than one 
generation of the children of Boston families. I 
supposed her to be one of the most aged, and 
certainly the most learned, women of her time. 
I believe she was a kind-hearted, intelligent girl 
of seventeen, when I first knew her. I also sup- 
posed the room to be a large hall, though I knew 
it was not nearly so large as our own parlors at 



A New England Boyhood 9 

home. It may have been eighteen feet square. 
The floor was sanded with clean sand every 
Thursday and Saturday afternoon. This was a 
matter of practical importance to us, because 
,vith the sand, using our feet as tools, we made 
sand pies. You gather the sand with the inside 
edge of either shoe from a greater or less dis- 
tance, as the size of the pie requires. As you 
gain skill, the heap which you make is more and 
more round. When it is well rounded you flatten 
it by a careful pressure of one foot from above. 
Hence it will be seen that full success depends 
on your keeping the sole of the shoe exactly 
parallel with the plane of the floor. If you find 
you have succeeded when you withdraw the shoe, 
you prick the pie with a pin or a broom splint 
provided for the purpose, pricking it in whatever 
pattern you like. The skill of a good pie-maker 
is measured largely by these patterns. It will 
readily be seen that the pie is better if the sand 
is a little moist. But beggars cannot be choosers, 
and while we preferred the sand on Mondays and 
Fridays, when it was fresh, we took it as it came. 

I dwell on this detail at length because it is 
one instance as good as a hundred of the way in 
which we adapted ourselves to the conditions of 
our times. Children now have carpets on their 
kindergarten floors, where sand is unknown; so 
we have to provide clay for them to model with, 
and put a heap of sand in the back yard. Miss 
Whitney provided for the same needs by a sim- 



lo A New England Boyhood 

pier device, which I dare say is as old as King 
Alfred. 

I cannot tell how we were taught to read, for I 
cannot remember the time when I could not read 
as well as I can now. There was a little spelling- 
book called "The New York Spelling-Book," 
printed by Mahlon Day. When, afterwards, I 
came to read about Mahlon in the book of Ruth, 
my notion of him was of a man who had the 
same name as the man who published the spell- 
ing-book. My grandfather had made a spelling- 
book which we had at home. Privately, I knew 
that, because he made it, it must be better than 
the book at school, but I was far too proud to 
explain this to Miss Whitney. I accepted her 
spelling-book in the same spirit in which I have 
often acted since, falling in with what I saw was 
the general drift, because the matter was of no 
great consequence. For reading-books we had 
Mrs. Barbauld's " First Lessons," " Come hither, 
Charles, come to mamma " ; and we had " Popu- 
lar Lessons," by Miss Robbins, which would be 
a good book to revive now, but I have not seen 
it for sixty years. 

The school must have been a very much " go- 
as-you-please " sort of place. So far it conformed 
to the highest ideals of the best modern systems. 
But it had rewards and punishments. I have now 
a life of William Tell which was given me as a 
prize when I was five years old. By way of 
showing what was then thought fit reading for 



A New England Boyhood 1 1 

boys of that age I copy the first sentence : 
" Friends of liberty, magnanimous hearts, sons of 
sensibility, ye who know how to die for your 
independence and live only for your brethren, 
lend an ear to my accents. Come ! hear how 
one single man, born in an uncivilized clime, in 
the midst of a people curbed beneath the rods of 
an oppressor, by his individual courage, raised 
this people so abashed, and gave it a new being" 
— and so on, and so on. My brother Nathan 
had " Rasselas " for a prize, and my sister Sarah 
had a silver medal, " To the most amiable," which 
I am sure she deserved, though the competition 
extended to the whole world. 

But these were the great prizes. In an old 
desk, of which the cover had been torn off, in 
the closet at the left of the fireplace, were a 
number of bows made of yellow, pink, and blue 
ribbon. When Saturday came, every child " who 
had been good" during the week was permitted 
to select one of these bows, choosing his own 
color, and to have it pinned on his clothes under 
his chin to wear home. If, on the other hand, 
he had been very bad, he had a black bow affixed, 
willy nilly. I hardly dare to soil this page with 
the tale, but there was an awful story that a boy, 
whom I will call Charles Waters, unpinned his 
black bow and trod it in the dirt of the street. 
But I hasten to add, that in that innocent com- 
munity no one believed this dreadful story. In- 
deed, it was whispered from one to another, rather 



12 A New England Boyhood 

as an index of what terrible stories were afloat in 
the world than with any feeling that it could pos- 
sibly be true. 

It is certainly a little queer that in after years 
one remembers such trifles as this, and forgets 
absolutely the weightier matters of the law ; how 
he learned to read and write ; how he fought with 
the angel of vulgar fractions and compelled him 
to grant a blessing; how, in a word, one learned 
anything of importance. But so it is ; and thus, 
as I have said, I have no memory of any time 
when I could not read as well as I can now. 
Perhaps that is the reason why I am too apt to 
rank teachers of elocution with dancing-masters 
and fencing-masters, and other professors of de- 
portment. Dear Miss Whitney must have taught 
us well, or we should have remembered the pro- 
cess more sadly. 

If this is a book of confessions I ought to tell my 
crimes, and one sin I certainly committed at Miss 
Whitney's school. But alas, I do not know what 
it was, and I never did. Only this I know. We 
were all too small to go home through Main Street 
alone. Fullum came for us at twelve, and again 
at five in the afternoon. Who Fullum was shall 
appear by and by. One day, when Fullum came 
at noon, he found me seated in a large yellow 
chair in the middle of the school-room. I was 
reading a book with perfect satisfaction. So soon 
as Fullum appeared, I was lifted from the chair 
and my " things " were put on. When we were 



A New England Boyhood 13 

in the street Fullum said, " What have you been 
doing that was naughty, doctor?" I told him, with 
perfect sincerity, that I had done nothing wrong. 
But this he did not believe. He reminded me of 
what I then recollected, that that yellow chair was 
always a seat of punishment. I had certainly 
never seen any one in it before — unless it were 
Miss Whitney herself — excepting the sinners of 
the school, placed there for punishment. But 
alas, it had not occurred to any one to tell me why 
I was put there ; and as my own conscience was 
clear, I have not known from that day to this what 
my offence was. 

I could probably without much difficulty make 
a volume on Miss Whitney's school, and the 
various aspects of life as they there presented 
themselves to me. But these papers must be 
severely condensed, and I omit such details. To 
me personally they have a little value, as bearing 
on the question how far back our memory really 
runs. There is a Frenchman who says that he 
recollects the relief produced on his eyes when he 
was a baby, thirty-six hours old, and a nurse 
lowered a curtain to screen him from the light. I 
am not able to fix any facts as early as this ; but 
I am interested in the observation that, among 
these early recollections of Miss Whitney, there is 
not included the slightest memory of my first inter- 
views with her. I had a brother and two sisters 
older than myself, who were my home playmates. 
I saw them go to school from day to day, and I 



14 A New England Boyhood 

finally cried because I wanted to go with them. 
Miss Whitney was therefore persuaded to receive 
a pupil two years old at the school. It speaks 
well for her, I think, that she found it possible to 
adapt such a young gentleman to the exercises of 
the academy. 

This makes me think, as I have said, that those 
exercises must have been conducted on the indi- 
vidual plan. But my chief memories of the school 
are of conducting observations, similar to Tyn- 
dall's, on the effect produced by sunlight upon 
dust floating in the air. Such luxuries as window- 
shades or blinds were unknown; if the sun shone 
in on the south side of the room you shut an 
inside shutter. This reminds me that inside shut- 
ters are almost wholly unknown to the rising gen- 
eration, but then every house of which I knew 
anything had them. At the top of ,this shutter, 
which was of panelled wood, a heart was cut, so 
as to let a little light into the room when the shut- 
ters were closed. It will readily be seen that this 
heart made very curious forms on the floating 
dust in the school-room. What with the manu- 
facture of sand pies and other enterprises going 
on, there must have been a good deal of dust in 
the school-room, and I remember far better the 
aspects of this dust, as the sun lighted it and as it 
floated in different currents, than I do any single 
lesson which I acquired from books. 

It will give some idea of the simplicity of man- 
ners and of the quietness of the little town if I tell 



A New England Boyhood i 5 

how "we four " — by which I mean the four 
oldest children of my father's family — went to 
school and returned, in the winter. 

In winter Fullum put my two sisters, my brother, 
and myself into a little green sleigh which he had 
had made, in which he dragged us over the snow 
to school. I believe that if any Fullum of to-day 
should start from the upper door of the Parker 
House, and drag four little children down School 
Street, through Washington Street, to Summer 
Street, and stop at a door opposite Hovey's, he 
would attract a fair share of attention. But there 
was room enough for all then. The " main street " 
was what the chief street of a good country town 
would be now, and this equipage seemed strange 
to nobody. 

"School kept" only in the morning on Satur- 
day, and Thursday afternoon was always a holi- 
day, in memory of the " Thursday lecture." ^ But 
as the lecture was delivered at eleven o'clock 

1 The Thursday lecture was a regular function, in which one of 
the Congregational ministers of Boston addressed such audiences 
as came together on Thursday. At this time the congregation 
consisted simply of the ministers of the town and neighborhood, 
and such ladies, generally past youth, as liked to go to hear the 
city clerk read the intentions of marriage. The law then required 
that these intentions should be read three times before some 
public assembly, and the Thursday lecture was dignified by the 
name of a public assembly. But in older times the lecture had 
been much more important. To tell the whole truth, the restric- 
tions in England, on such week-day addresses as were made by 
distinguished preachers, drove the particular thorn in the side of 
the Puritan which did most to drive him to his new home in the 
West. Cotton and the other preachers had all been imprisoned, 



1 6 A New England Boyhood 

in the morning, and every school kept until twelve, 
there was, of course, no real connection between 
the holiday and the lecture. The half-holiday was 
changed to Wednesday, a few years later than the 
time I am speaking of. It is on this account that 
Wednesday and Saturday appear to me, to this 
moment, the happiest days of the week. For I 
may as well say, first as last, that school was 
always a bore to me. I did not so much hate it, as 
dislike it, as a necessary nuisance. I think all my 
teachers regarded it as such ; I am sure they 
made me so regard it. 

Just before I was six years old I was transferred 
from Miss Whitney's school to another school 
which was in the immediate neighborhood, being 
in the basement of the First Church, which was 
then in Chauncy Street. It stood, I think, just 
where Coleman & Mead's great store stands. 
There were three or four large rooms under the 
church, which were rented as school-rooms ; and 
it being thought that I was large enough to go to 

or threatened with being imprisoned, because they would deliver 
these week-day lectures. The people who emigrated were abso- 
lutely determined that they would hear them, and that is probably 
the reason why the reader and I are in this country — because 
our ancestors chose to go to church in the middle of the week. 
When they came here they established the Thursday lecture. 
Cotton's fame and eloquence were such that the Thursday lecture 
gave Boston its pre-eminence in the Bay, a pre-eminence which it 
did not have before Cotton arrived. So that the Thursday lecture 
has a definite historical interest to a Boston born man. But the 
average Boston man long since ceased to go to hear it, and it is 
now discontinued. 



A New England Boyhood 17 

a man's school, I was sent there, to my great 
delight, with my friend Edward Webster. We 
were very intimate from days earlier than this, of 
which I will speak in another chapter, and it was a 
great pleasure to us that we could go to school 
together. He had been at Miss Ayres's, so that 
only an entry parted us. There was no thought 
of sending me to a public school. 

My father and mother had both very decided, 
and, I have a right to say, very advanced, 
views on matters of education; and advanced 
education was then a matter everywhere in the 
air. The Boston Latin School had been made a 
first-rate school for preparing boys for college, 
under the eye and care of Benjamin Apthorp 
Gould, some ten years before. But there was 
no public school of any lower grade, to which my 
father would have sent me, any more than he 
would have sent me to jail. Since that time I have 
heard my contemporaries talk of the common 
school training of the day, and I do not wonder at 
my father's decision. The masters, so far as I 
know, were all inferior men ; there was constant 
talk of " hiding" and " cow-hides " and " ferules" 
and " thrashing," and I should say, indeed, that 
the only recollections of my contemporaries about 
those school-days are of one constant low conflict 
with men of a very low type. So soon as a boy 
was sent to the Latin School — and he was sent 
there at nine years of age — all this was changed 
into the life of a civilized place. Why the Boston 



1 8 A New England Boyhood 

people tolerated such brutality as went on in their 
other public schools I do not know, and never 
have known ; but no change came for some years 
after. 

For the next three years the only object, so far 
as I was concerned, was to have me live along and 
get ready for the Latin School. I have always 
been glad that I was sent where I was — to a 
school without any plan or machinery, like Miss 
Whitney's, very much on the go-as-you-please 
principle, and where there was no strain put upon 
the pupil. I disliked it, as I disliked all schools; 
but here, again, I regarded the whole arrangement 
as one of those necessary nuisances which society 
imposes on the individual, and which the individ- 
ual would be foolish if he quarrelled with, when he 
did not have it in his power to abolish it. I had 
no such power, and therefore went and came as I 
was bidden, only eager every day to exchange the 
monotonies of school life for the more varied and 
larger enterprises of the play-room or of the 
Common, 

I have said that advanced education was in the 
air. It will be hard to make boys and girls of the 
present day understand how much was then ex- 
pected from reforms in education. Dr. Channing 
was at his best then, and all that he had to say 
about culture and self-culture impressed people 
intensely — more intensely, I think, than was good 
for them. There were rumors from Europe of 
Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl. At Northampton 



A New England Boyhood 19 

the Round Hill School was started in 1823 on some- 
what similar plans. In England Lord Brougham 
and the set of people around him were discussing 
the '* march of intellect," and had established a 
Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, 
whose name has lived after it. I may say here, in 
a parenthesis, that the first time I ever heard of 
the " march of intellect" was when I saw a very 
funny play, in which a clever boy named Burke 
was the hero in the " march of intellect." He ap- 
peared in half a dozen characters, to teach half a 
dozen subjects ; and it was a capital satire on the 
idea that everything could be taught by profes- 
sors. Mr. Webster, Mr. Edward Everett, my 
father, and other gentlemen in their position es- 
tablished the " Useful Knowledge Society " of 
Boston. The reign of Lyceums and Mechanics' 
Institutes had begun. Briefly, there was the real 
impression that the kingdom of heaven was to be 
brought in by teaching people what were the rela- 
tions of acids to alkalies, and what was the deriva- 
tion of the word " cordwainer." If we only knew 
enough, it was thought, we should be wise enough 
to keep out of the fire, and we should not be burned. 
So it was that any novelty, when it was pre- 
sented at a school-room door, was even more apt 
to be accepted than it is now; and, as every reader 
of these lines knows, such things are accepted 
pretty willingly now. So I remember that I was 
taught "geometry" when I was six years old — 
or that I thought I was — from a little book called 



20 A New England Boyhood 

" The Elements of Geometry." I could rattle off 
about isosceles triangles when I was six, as well as 
I can now. And I had other queer smattering 
bits of knowledge, useful or useless, which were 
picked up in the same way. 

At school there was a school library, from 
which we borrowed books, because we liked the 
mechanism of it. We had much better books at 
home; but of course it was good fun to have your 
name entered on a book, and to return them once 
a week, and so on. 

My father was one of the best teachers I ever 
knew. When he had a moment, therefore, from 
other affairs to give to our education, it was 
always well used ; and we doubtless owed a great 
deal to him which we afterwards did not know 
how to account for. Among other such benefac- 
tions, I owe it that for these three or four years, 
when really I had nothing to do but to grow 
physically, I was placed with a simple, foolish man 
for a teacher, and not with one of the drivers, who 
had plans and would want to make much of us. 
Among other notions of my father, right or wrong 
as the case may be, was this : that a boy could 
pick up the rudiments of language quite early in 
life. So the master was told that Edward Webster 
and I, and perhaps some other boys, were to be 
taught the paradigms of the Latin grammar at 
once. We also had given to us little Latin books, 
which we spelled away upon. One was a transla- 
tion of Campe's German version of " Robinson 



A New England Boyhood 21 

Crusoe " into Latin. It was thought that the 
interest of the book would induce us to learn the 
meaning of the words. But the truth was, we 
were familiar with Defoe's " Robinson Crusoe," 
and regarded this as a low and foolish imitation, 
of which we made a great deal of fun. All the 
same, the agony with which some boys remember 
their first studies of " avio, amas, atnat," is wholly 
unknown to me. I drifted into those things 
simply, and by the time I was sent to the Latin 
School the point had been gained, and I knew my 
" pemta, pennce, pejiiicB" and my " aniOy amas, 
amat," as well as if I had been born to them. 

The Latin School stood, at that time, where the 
lower part of Parker's Hotel is now, in School 
Street. School Street received its name from this 
school. At the beginning the school was on the 
other side of the street, where the Franklin statue 
now stands. But when the King's Chapel people 
had increased so much, that they wanted to enlarge 
their little wooden tabernacle and carry their 
church farther down the street, about the middle 
of the last century, they applied to the town for 
the use of the school-house lot. 

This was the occasion of a fierce battle in more 
than one town meeting. Really, the question 
divided the old line Puritans, or the people who 
held to their traditions, from the new people, who 
were either conscientious members of the Episcopal 
Church or were quite indifferent to the matter. 
But the town gave its consent, by a very small 



22 A New England Boyhood 

majority, to the removal of the school-house, and 
the King's Chapel people had to build a new 
school-house for the town on the southern side 
of the street. This stood till 1814, when a larger 
house was built in the same place. This school- 
house made the side of what is now known as Chap- 
man Place ; but in my time this was called Cooke's 
Court, in honor of a certain Elisha Cooke, who 
was a very eminent man in colonial times. There 
were one or two old wooden houses in the court, 
one of which was covered with Virginia creeper, 
the first I ever saw. I remember thinking that 
the berries of the Virginia creeper were, in some 
sort, discovered by me, and that no one had known 
of their existence before, and I was disappointed 
that they proved to be such poor eating. 

Above the school, on School Street, was a 
wooden house, with a garden in front of it, and 
further up still a new brick house, where, in the 
early part of these reminiscences, my father's 
family lived. From the back windows of this 
house, when I was a very little boy, I used to 
look out and see the boys at play. It will amuse 
the boys of the present generation to know that 
in summer most of them wore long calico gowns, 
quite like the gowns which ministers sometimes 
wear now, only without the flowing sleeves. 

Boys were then admitted into the Latin School 
when they were nine years old. They were exam- 
nied so far as to see if they could spell decently and 
whether they had some slight knowledge of arith- 



A New England Boyhood 23 

mctic. As for writing, we were expected to learn 
that after we entered the school. Once there we 
were all put into the same class, and were set to 
studying our Latin grammar. 

We always came to school early, all of the fun 
of the school being enjoyed before the bell rang. 
Different classes grouped in different corners of the 
neighborhood, and talked of the school news or 
the news of the day with the other fellows. We 
had some South End boys, who came to school 
highly excited one day with the announcement 
that an "omnibus " had been put upon Washing- 
ton Street. No one had ever seen an omnibus 
before. This omnibus was called the Governor 
Brooks, and it had four horses, and it was twice 
as long as any omnibus which any Boston boy has 
seen in our streets now for twenty years. I felt, 
afterwards, quite sure that I rode up the long hill 
at Granada in Spain in the same omnibus, and I 
was terribly afraid that the linchpin might give 
way, but this may have been a delusion of mine. 
The first " omnibus " in the world was put on its 
work in Paris. It was called "La Dame Blanche," 
from the White Lady of Scott's novel of " The 
Monastery," about the year 1821, 

We had not much room for playing, but we 
might take a turn at tag or some other out-door 
game before the school-bell rang. But at last, at 
eight o'clock in summer and at nine in winter, the 
bell began to ring. It rang for five minutes, and 
before the end of the five minutes every boy must 



24 A New England Boyhood 

be in his place. The masters, four or five of them, 
had been standing in the meanwhile on the side- 
walk in front of the school door ; as the bell rang 
they bowed to each other and repaired one by one 
to their rooms. 

About this bell there were various traditions, 
and its experience had, indeed, been somewhat 
singular. I believe it had been the bell of the 
Huguenot Church lower down on the same street. 
It hung, as church bells do, on the wheel in the 
cupola, but it had long since been found that no 
rope on the wheel would give to the bell the 
regular stroke which for some reason was thought 
desirable. Some strong, quick boy was therefore 
sent up into the belfry, and he took hold of the 
tongue and struck it rapidly and sharply on the 
side of the bell. It may readily be seen that to 
do this for five minutes was quite an exhausting 
bit of physical labor, but, for all that, it was rather 
a privilege to be permitted to ring the bell. For, 
in compensation for doing so the boy was awarded 
certain credits on his conduct or recitation lists; 
and the boy who found himself going to the bad, 
in his studies or by any other bad marks, would 
ask to be assigned to the bell that he might work 
off these misdemeanors by the diligence of his 
bell-ringing. Some boys rang the bell well, some 
rang it badly, and a certain distinction attached 
to the business. I remember perfectly that, when 
on some occasion the bell-boy was absent, Mr. 
Dillaway, looking around for a substitute, sent me 



A New England Boyhood 25 

up into the belfry; but I made wretched work of 
the bell, and was not sorry to be relieved before a 
minute was over by some more stalwart boy who 
was more used to the business. 

By the time the bell struck its last stroke every 
boy would be in his seat. The boys of the pres- 
ent generation have little idea what such seats 
were. At first they were simply long benches 
with what we call long "forms" in front. About 
midway of my school career, there were substi- 
tuted for these benches separate desks, somewhat 
like what boys have now, but with the very hard- 
est and smallest seat which was ever contrived for 
an unfortunate boy to wriggle upon. Still we 
could open the desks and support them with our 
heads while we pretended to be arranging our 
books. No school-boy who has ever had the 
felicity of such a desk, needs to be told what 
various orgies we could carry on under such 
shelter of protection. 

A certain good-natured courtesy assigned to 
our school as a teacher of penmanship one of the 
old masters who was supposed to have outlived 
his usefulness in the " grammar school." This 
was Mr. Jonathan Snelling. We used to call 
him familiarly " Old Johnny Snelling," but we 
always treated him with the respect which was 
due to an old man. The days of quill pens had 
not gone by, and it was then a part of a boy's or 
girl's education to know how to make a pen well 
— an accomplishment which, I am afraid, is not 



26 A New England Boyhood 

now possessed by all the readers of these lines. 
Johnny Snelling had his own little room apart 
from the room of the head-master, and the boys 
in that room went in to him to write; but the 
other boys wrote in different hours assigned for 
the purpose, and Johnny Snelling went from room 
to room to give them their instruction. For me, 
I wrote wretchedly, and was always marked very 
low on the calendar, but I would persuade this 
good old gentleman to assign to me copies in 
German text or old English or the other varia- 
tions from the deadly monotony of the copybook, 
rather in the hope that I might conciliate the 
masters, by the enterprise of this break out into 
new fields. At all events this was some variety, 
and as I have said it was on the monotony of 
school life that my dislike of it was founded. I 
was eventually taught how to write decently by a 
man named Munyan who came to Boston when I 
was in college. 

I entered the school in 1 831, being then nine 
years old. That was the minimum for the en- 
trance of boys at that time, and the course was 
five years. I saw Mr. Leverett, who was the prin- 
cipal when I was admitted, but in the course of 
a few weeks he left the school to the charge of 
Mr. Charles Knapp Dillaway, who is well remem- 
bered by everyone who has had anything to do 
with education in Boston for the last sixty years. 
I may say in passing that I was permitted to speak 
at his funeral, and I could not but remember then 



A New England Boyhood 27 

that, from the time when he entered the Latin 
School in 181 8 till he died in 1889, he had been 
personally connected more or less distinctly with 
our system of public education. He had, there- 
fore, seen the working of that system for more 
than a quarter part of the period since it was 
established by Winthrop and his companions in 

1635- 

The system of the school was rigid, but I do 
not think boys object to rigidity. It carried to 
the extreme the cultivation of verbal memory. 
We had a very bad Latin grammar, which I sup- 
pose was the best there was, made by Mr. Gould 
himself from Principal Adam's " Latin Grammar," 
which was used in all English schools. " Prin- 
cipal Adam " is the Edinburgh Adam of whom 
you read in Walter Scott and other Scotch books. 
The late Joseph Gardner, laughing about such 
things a few years ago, said to me, " I can remem- 
ber the block on which I was standing in the 
Place Vendome in Paris, when, as by a revela- 
tion, it occurred to me that Andrews and Stod- 
dard's "Latin Grammar" was made from the 
Latin language, and that the Latin language was 
not made from Andrews and Stoddard's grammar, 
as up to that moment I had always supposed." 

I am quite clear that I went well through the 
Latin School with the distinct feeling that Adam's 
grammar stated the eternal truth with regard to 
the language, and that Cicero and the rest of 
them had had to adapt themselves to it. I can- 



28 A New England Boyhood 

not think that the masters thought so, but I doubt 
if they cared much about it, and certainly they 
left that impression on the minds of the pupils. 
The first year of the little boys was spent in com- 
mitting the words of this grammar to memory. 
Unless a boy were singularly advanced he had 
no school-book in hand from September to the 
next August excepting this Latin grammar. I 
cannot conceive of any system more disposed to 
make him hate the language ; and in fact about 
half the boys withdrew from the school, as not 
having " a gift for language," before they had 
been there two years. These were generally the 
boys of quick and bright minds, who went off 
" into business," as it was called, because they 
were thought not fit to be scholars. The pro- 
fessional lines of life thus lost those who would 
have been ornaments in whatever profession they 
had chosen, simply because those lads had not 
the verbal memory to remember and recall long 
lists of words, which Adam had noticed, such, for 
one instance in a thousand, as had or had not an 
/ before tun in the genitive plural. 

I will say in passing, what I have often had 
occasion to say in public, that it would be easy 
to prepare a bright boy or girl of sixteen years of 
age to pass the Harvard Greek entrance examina- 
tion in four months of interested study. 

But I do not propose to go into the niceties of 
education in these papers. Thanks to the pre- 
science of my father, of which I have spoken, I 



A New England Boyhood 29 

was put in with the ten-year-old boys, who had 
ground through this mill. Till this moment I am 
their inferior in certain of those details of words 
to which I have referred, but I enjoyed life at 
school a great deal better than they did. 

The " march of intellect " fad had not swept 
over Boston without bringing in the German 
notions about gymnasiums. Dr. Francis Lieber 
arrived, an exile from Germany, with Dr. Charles 
Beck, who was also an exile, and they established 
a swimming school where Brimmer Street is now, 
and a gymnasium in Tremont Street — then called 
Common Street — at the corner of West Street. 
That place was then called the " Washington 
Gardens." Mr. Hartwell, in his recent interesting 
essay on gymnastics in Boston, says that the first 
year Lieber's gymnasium in the Washington Gar- 
dens had two hundred pupils, which increased to 
four hundred in the second, and in the third year 
he had four pupils. These figures show only too 
fatally what was the fall of the athletic thermometer. 
More learned people than I must say, whether 
the system of gymnastics carried on by fixed 
machinery ever maintains its popularity for a long 
time, unless it is seconded by athletics such as we 
now class under that name, and by a certain 
rivalry. 

My brother Nathan, to whom I owe most of 
what I am and have been in the world, was entered 
as one of the pupils in the Washington Gar- 
dens gymnasium. It must have been in the year 



30 A New England Boyhood 

1827, or possibly 1828, that he took me with him 
there. All that I remember about it is my terror 
when I had climbed up a ladder and cut ofif my 
retreat. I had seen the other boys climb between 
the rounds and slide down the pole which sup- 
ported the ladder, and I wished to do this. I got 
through the rounds and then was afraid to slide. 
But a competent teacher came up, instructed me 
in the business, and I won the high courage by 
which to loosen my feet from the rounds and slide 
safely down. I went home to tell this story with 
delight, but never repeated the experiment. 

At the same time — and I think this shows the 
courage with which our education was carried on 

— I made my first essays in riding on horseback. 
My father owned a handsome horse, with which 
he took our mother and some one of the children 
out to ride on half-holidays. On some occasions 
another horse, which was called the " Work- 
bench " from his quiet habits — white, I recollect 

— was taken with us, saddled. This was that "we 
boys " might learn to ride. We were not per- 
mitted to ride in the streets in town, and father 
would ride the horse out so far, while my mother 
drove the chaise. But once in the country the 
boy mounted, and followed the chaise for the 
afternoon tour. At five years old I was so small 
that my feet would not reach the stirrups, and I 
rode with my feet in the straps which sustained the 
stirrups. All went well till, in South Boston, as 
we came home, some boys stoned my horse, and 



A New England Boyhood 31 

he ran and I was thrown. I remember repeating 
the experiment with the same success and faikirc, 
and it ended in my poor father having to ride the 
"Work-bench" home, while I ignominiously re- 
turned in the chaise as I had started. 

The drift for athletics had swept over the Latin 
School also, and the square yard behind the school, 
which seemed immense, but could have been only 
thirty feet in each measurement, was fitted up with 
a vaulting-horse, parallel bars, and so on. But, 
as the fad wore itself out, the boys were permitted 
to destroy these things ; and when I entered the 
school, in 1831, there were only the vaulting-horse 
and, perhaps, a pair of parallel bars left; and 
these gradually disappeared from the curriculum. 
This play-ground was the only play-ground of the 
school, and was accessible only to the boys in the 
lowest room. Upstairs we were confined to a 
very limited passage-way, I might call it, at recess, 
in which we used to play " tug-of-war," though we 
never called it by that name. Practically the 
recesses were very short, for the simple reason 
that they did not like to have us in the street. 

Earlier than this, I can remember, when I was 
only four or five years old, that we looked from 
the windows of the house out upon the street, to 
see the sports of the boys there, when rather more 
liberty was granted them. Among these sports I 
remember distinctly seeing the older boys kick 
their pails to pieces at the end of the school term. 
They would subscribe for pails in which to keep 



32 A New England Boyhood 

the water which they wanted to drink in the hot 
days ; and when the term was done, not wishing to 
leave the pails to their successors, they kicked 
them about the sidewalk and street until they 
were ruined. 

To this school we repaired at eight o'clock in 
the morning for the months between April and 
October, and at nine o'clock from the ist of Octo- 
ber to the 1st of April. School lasted till twelve 
o'clock, excepting for the little boys, who, in the 
latter part of my time, were "let out" at eleven 
o'clock. School began again at three, and lasted, 
in winter, as long as there was light, and in sum- 
mer till six o'clock. I remember the terror which 
we had one afternoon, which must have been in 
May, 1833, when two of us were to go and see 
Fanny Kemble in the evening. As it happened, 
the school committee chose to come that after- 
noon for an examination, and our class was kept 
in for the completion of the examination after six 
o'clock. We sat there terrified, in fear the exam- 
ination would last until the play began in the 
Tremont Theatre, hard by. I am afraid the boys 
of to-day would consider it rather hard lines, if 
they were ever kept at school till the beginning 
of their theatrical entertainment. 

In James Freeman Clarke's autobiography there 
is a charming passage about his stay at this school. 
He does not in the least overstate the admirable 
democratic effect of the whole thing. We were 
side by side with the sons of the richest and most 



A New England Boyhood 33 

prominent men in Boston; we were side by side 
with the sons of day-laborers, I suppose. The 
odd thing about it is that we did not know, and 
we did not care, whose sons they were. They 
were all dressed alike, they spoke equally good 
English, their hands were equally clean, and what 
we knew of them was that one fellow was at the 
head of the class, and one was not. There was a 
charming boy named Carleton — Charles Muzzey 
Carleton — who was at the head of my class. He 
was a pure, manly, upright, gentlemanly fellow, 
a much better boy than any of the rest of us were, 
and we therefore chose to nickname him " Piety 
Carleton." I am afraid we made him very unhappy 
by the nickname, but he bore himself in just as 
manly a way in spite of it. I have been glad to 
know since these pages were first printed that he 
still lives, none the less prosperous or happy for 
our brutal unkindness. 

It was a queer transition time for schools. The 
present murderous and absurd system of " exam- 
inations " was wholly unknown. Each master 
got along as well as he could with his boys, and 
the boys got along as well as they could with the 
master. There was one head-master, a sub-mas- 
ter, and two others, who were called ushers on the 
printed catalogue, but were never so called by the 
boys. Whatever the age of these gentlemen, 
they were always called " old." It was " Old 
Dillaway," "Old Gardner," " Old Streeter," or " Old 
Benjamin." I now know that the oldest of them 

3 



34 A New England Boyhood 

was not thirty-five, and that most of them were 
not twenty-five. 

We were changed from room to room, seldom 
staying in one room more than three months, but 
the highest class was always with the head-master. 
I remember one occasion — I was about ten years 
old — when, to our delight, we were ordered 
upstairs from the " English room." We were 
pleased because it was known that the new master 
there was very easy, and that the " fellows did as 
they chose." It was so, indeed. I recollect my 
amazement when I saw Hancock cross the room 
without leave, make a snowball from the snow in 
a pail, and carry it back ostentatiously to place it 
on the front of his desk. The snow was provided 
for use on the stove, where there was a provision 
for a pan of water. From this he then made little 
snowballs with which to pelt the other boys, all 
without interruption from the master. 

But other things went on with the same free- 
dom, which were of more import. I was seated 
next to Hayward, whom I then met for the first 
time, and who has since been a life-long friend. 
His class was reading Cicero's orations. He asked 
me what I knew about Cicero ; and, when I told 
him I knew nothing, he kindly went into a some- 
what elaborate history of his life and analysis of 
his character as they appeared to a boy of his 
age. He has forgotten this, but I remember it 
perfectly. It seems to me that this extempore 
private lecture must have lasted the whole after- 



A New England Boyhood 35 

noon. The poor master made no sort of interfer- 
ence with it, probably glad if two of his scholars 
were doing nothing worse than talking. 

But alas, and alas ! this paradise of King Log 
came to an end in a day or two. This amiable 
gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, was 
removed, and Francis Gardner was put in his 
place. For forty years after he was master in that 
school, and is now well known as a distinguished 
classical teacher and editor. That was his baptism 
in a school-master's life, and a baptism of fire it 
was. We were afterwards intimate friends, and he 
told me once that his first month, when he was 
bringing those wild-cat boys into order, was the 
hardest experience of his life. 

In the English room, according to the absurd 
theory of many schools, the whole class was kept 
together, without any reference to what they knew 
of the subject. That is to say, we were classed for 
our knowledge of Latin, and nobody seemed to 
care how much or how little we knew of arithmetic. 
I used to do "the sums" and write down the 
numerical answers in advance, so far as my slate 
would hold them. I was fond of arithmetic, and 
so I would be days ahead of the class. Such was 
also the case with Richard Storrs Willis, the 
eminent musician, who sat by me. He brought 
to school Kettell's "Specimens of American 
Poetry," a book of that time, in three closely 
printed octavo volumes. We read the three 
volumes through, and a deal of trash there is 



36 A New England Boyhood 

in them. Still it was better than doing nothing ; 
and so I suppose the master thought, for he never 
interfered. 

To me this was all a curious double life. I 
was on perfect terms of companionship with the 
fellows in school in recess and in the few minutes 
before school. But as soon as school was over 
I rushed home, without these companions, to join 
my brother Nathan, who has been spoken of, for 
the occupations vastly more important, which I 
will describe in another chapter. The other 
fellows would urge us to go down on the wharves, 
as they did. The fathers of most of them were in 
mercantile life, for Boston was still largely a ship- 
ping town. I can remember asking one of them 
what we should do on the wharves, with a horrified 
feeling which I have to this day about any vague 
future entertainment of which the lines are not 
indicated. He said, " Oh, we can go about the 
vessels, we can talk with the men." Perhaps they 
would be landing molasses, and we could dip 
straws in the bung-holes; or once a cask had 
broken open, and the fellows had gathered up 
brown sugar in their hands. To this day, when 
I hear of persons going abroad or anywhere else 
in search of an undefined amusement, I imagine 
them dipping straws into casks of West India 
molasses, and then drawing those straws through 
their mouths. 

For me and my brother such temptations were 
idle. Till the last year of my school life we had 



A New England Boyhood 37 

more attractive work at home. In that year 
Edward Renouf, the Dr. Renouf of to-day, told us 
that he had access to the wood wharves on Front 
Street, near where the United States Hotel now 
stands. He said there were no other fellows 
there. For some reason not known to me there 
were no wharfingers or other attendants. With 
him, and possibly with Atkins, we used to spend 
hours on those wharves. The Boston reader will 
please observe that Beach Street means a street 
on the beach, and that Harrison Avenue, then 
called Front Street, was the " front" of that part of 
the town. Why there were no keepers on those 
wharves I never asked, and do not know. 
Whether what we did were right or wrong in the 
view of magistrates I do not know. I do know 
that it was morally and eternally right, because we 
thought it was. That is one of the queer things 
about a boy's conscience. I do not remember 
that, till the time when I dictate these words, for 
nearl}' sixty years, it has once occurred to me to 
ask whose was the property we used on these 
occasions, or what the owners would have said to 
our use of it. But they did not suffer much, if at 
all. There were great stacks of hemlock bark, 
which was then coming into use in winter as 
kindling for anthracite coal. You could take one 
of these pieces of bark, three or four feet long, 
bore three holes for masts, and fit this hull with 
three masts made from shingles or laths. Stiff 
wrapping-paper made good sails, and writing- 



38 A New England Boyhood 

books were big enough for topsails. Then you 
could sail them from wharf to wharf, on voyages 
much more satisfactory than the shorter voyages 
of the Frog Pond. I do not knovv but that, with 
favorable western winds, one might come out at 
Sallee, on the coast of Morocco, with the location 
of which we were familiar from the experience of 
Robijison Crusoe and Xiiry. We knew much more 
of that port than of Lisbon, Oporto, or Bordeaux. 

But this is an excursus which belongs rather to 
the chapter on amusements. The home rule was 
absolute, and always obeyed, that we must report 
at home as soon as school was done. This rule 
undoubtedly interfered with excursions to the 
wharves, which, indeed, had my father been a 
shipping merchant, might have been more fre- 
quent. School life of itself had httle to relieve it 
of its awful monotony. Saturday was better than 
the other days, because we all went upstairs into 
the master's room to hear the declamations. 
Every boy spoke from the stage once a month. 
And here I have heard William Evarts, Fletcher 
Webster, Mayor Prince, Thomas Dawes — ah ! 
and many others who have been distinguished 
since as orators. Phillips, Hillard, Sumner, and 
the Emersons were a little before my time, but I 
have seen the prize exercises of all of them among 
the treasures of the school. 

I remember perfectly the first time I spoke. It 
must have been in September, 1831. At my 
mother's instigation I spoke a little poem by Tom 



A New England Boyhood 39 

Moore, long since forgotten by everybody else, 
which I had learned and spoken at the other 
school. It is a sort of ode, in which Moore 
abuses some poor Neapolitan wretches because 
they had made nothing of a rebellion against the 
Austrians. I stepped on the stage, frightened, 
but willing to do as I had been told, made my 
bow, and began : 

Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are ! 

I had been told that I must stamp my foot at 
the words, " Down to the dust with them," and I 
did, though I hated to, and was sore afraid. 
Naturally enough all the other boys, one hundred 
and fifty of them, laughed at such an exhibition of 
passion from one of the smallest of their number. 
All the same, I plodded on ; but alas ! I came 
inevitably to the other line : 

If there linger one spark of their fire, tread it out! 

and here I had to stamp again, as much to the 
boys' amusement as before. I did not get a 
" good mark " for speaking then, and I never did 
afterwards. But the exercise did what it was meant 
to do, that is, it taught us not to be afraid of the 
audience. And this, so far as I know, is all of 
elocution that can be taught, or need be tried for. 
In college, it was often very droll when the time 
came for one of the Southern braggarts to speak 
at an exhibition. For we saw then the same 
young man who had always blown his own trum- 
pet loudly, and been cock of the walk in his own 



40 A New England Boyhood 

estimation — we saw him with his knees shaking 
under him on the college platform because he had 
to speak in the presence of two hundred people, 
I owe to the public school, and to this now de- 
spised exercise of declamation, that ease before an 
audience which I share with most New Englanders. 
This is to say that I owe to it the great pleasure of 
public speaking when one has anything to say. I 
think most public men will agree with me that this 
is one of the most exquisite pleasures of life. 

CHAPTER III 

THE SWIMMING SCHOOL 

Joy, joy, joy! Of a hot summer day in June, 
when I was nine years old, I was asked how I 
would like to learn to swim. Little doubt in the 
mind of any boy who reads this what my answer 
was. I and my elder brother, who was twelve, 
were to be permitted to go to the swimming 
school. This was joy enough to have that year 
marked with red in our history. 

As I have said. Dr. Francis Lieber, who had been 
exiled from Germany a few years before, had 
come to Boston, and had established first his 
gymnasium and then his swimming school. 
Swimming schools were and are thoroughly estab- 
lished on the continent of Europe, and the Ger- 
mans have a special reputation for skill in swim- 
ming. With the gymnasium I had little or noth- 



A New England Boyhood 41 

ing to do but what I have told. I was, indeed, 
quite too small to be put through its exercises. 

The swimming school was in water which 
flowed where Brimmer Street and the houses 
behind it are now built. It was just such a build- 
ing as the floating baths are now which the city 
maintains, but that it enclosed a much larger 
space. Of this space a part had a floor so that 
the water flowed through ; the depth was about 
five feet. To little boys like me it made little 
difference that there was this floor, for we could 
be as easily drowned in five feet of water as if 
there were fifteen. 

With great delight I carried down my little 
bathing drawers, which were marked with my 
own number so that they might always hang upon 
my peg. With the drawers and my towels I 
proceeded to a little cell, just such as the bathers 
at South Boston have now, with the great 
advantage, however, that its door was made of 
sail-cloth. You selected a cell on the northern 
side, so that when you went into the water you 
could draw your sail-cloth into the sun, and the 
sun would heat it well through; then, after your 
bath, you stood wrapped up in this warm linen 
shroud, and the luxury was considered exquisite. 

So soon as you were undressed and ready — 
and this meant in about one minute — you took 
your turn to be taught. A belt was put around 
you under your arms; to this belt a rope was 
attached, and you were told to jump in. You 



42 A New England Boyhood 

jumped in and went down as far as gravity chose 
to take you, and were then pulled up by the rope. 
The rope was then attached to the end of a long 
belt, and you were swung out upon the surface of 
the water. Then began the instruction. 

"O-n-e; — two, three:" the last two words 
spoken with great rapidity — "one" spoken very 
slowly. This meant that the knees and feet were 
to be drawn up very slowly, but were to be dashed 
out very quickly, and then the heels brought to- 
gether as quickly. 

Boys who were well built for it and who were 
quick learned to swim in two or three lessons. 
Slender boys and little boys who had not much 
muscular force — and such was I — were a whole 
summer before they could be trusted without the 
rope. But the training was excellent, and from 
the end of that year till now I have been entirely 
at home in the water. I think now that scientific 
and systematic training in swimming is a very 
important part of public instruction, and I wish we 
could see it introduced everywhere where there is 
responsible oversight of boys or girls at school. 

CHAPTER IV 

LIFE AT HOME 

I AM certainly not writing my autobiography; but 
I cannot give any idea of how boys lived in the 
decade when I was a boy — that is, in the years 



A New England Boyhood 43 

between 1826 and 1836 — without giving a chap- 
ter to home Hfe as I saw it. In passing I will say 
that I first remember the figures 1826, thus com- 
bined, as I saw them on the cover of Thomas's 
Almanac of 1827. Here Time, with the figures 
1827 on his head, was represented as mowing in a 
churchyard, where a new stone with the figures 
1826 was prominent; 1825, 1824, and the others 
were on stones somewhat overgrown by grass and 
sunken in the ground. The conceit seemed to 
me admirable, and the date fixed itself on my 
memory. 

I was born in a house which stood where 
Parker's larger lunch-room now fronts the Tre- 
mont House. We moved from this house to that 
on the corner of School Street, lately purchased 
by Mr. Parker to enlarge his hotel, and in 1828 we 
moved again to the new house, which was, and is, 
No. I Tremont Place. It is now two or three 
stories higher than it was then ; but some parts of 
the interior are not changed. Behind it was a 
little yard, with a wood-house, called a "shed," 
on top of which the clothes were dried. This 
arrangement was important for our New England 
childhood. 

I was the youngest of four children who made 
the older half of a large family. By a gap between 
me and my brother Alexander, — who afterwards 
was lost in the government service in Pensacola, 
— " we four " were separated from the " three 
little ones." It is necessary to explain this in 



44 A New England Boyhood 

advance, in a history which is rather a history of 
young Hfe in Boston than of mine alone. 

My father, as I have said, was an experienced 
teacher in young life, and he never lost his interest 
in the business of education. My mother had a 
genius for education, and it is a pity that, at an 
epoch in her life when she wanted to open a girls' 
school, she was not permitted to do so. They 
had read enough of the standard books on educa- 
tion to know how much sense there was in them, 
and how much nonsense. Such books were about 
in the house, more or less commented on by us 
young critics as we grew big enough to dip into 
them. 

At the moment I had no idea that any science 
or skill was expended on our training. I supposed 
I was left to the great American proverb which I 
have already cited : " Go as you please." But I 
have seen since that the hands were strong which 
directed this gay team of youngsters, though there 
was no stimulus we knew of, and though the touch 
was velvet. An illustration of this was in that 
wisdom of my father in sending me for four years 
to school to a simpleton. 

The genius of the whole, shown by both my 
father and mother, came out in the skill which 
made home the happiest place of all, so that we 
simply hated any engagement which took us else- 
where, unless we were in the open air. I have 
said that I disliked school, and that I did not want 
to go down on the wharves, even with that doubt- 



A New England Boyhood 45 

fill bribe of the molasses casks. At home we had 
an infinite variety of amusements. At home we 
might have all the other boys, if we wished. At 
home, in our two stories, we were supreme. The 
scorn of toys which is reflected in the Edgeworth 
books had, to a certain extent, its effect on the 
household. But we had almost everything we 
wanted for purposes of manufacture or invention. 
Whalebone, spiral springs, pulleys, and catgut, for 
perpetual motion or locomotive carriages; rollers 
and planks for floats — what they were I will ex- 
plain — all were obtainable. In the yard we had 
parallel bars and a high cross-pole for climbing. 
When we became chemists we might have sul- 
phuric acid, nitric acid, litmus paper, or whatever 
we desired, so our allowance would stand it. I 
was not more than seven years old when I burned 
off my eyebrows by igniting gunpowder with my 
burning-glass. My hair was then so light that 
nobody missed a little, more or less, above the 
eyelids. I thought it was wisest not to tell my 
mother, because it might shock her nerves, and I 
was a man, thirty years old, before she heard of it. 
Such playthings as these, with very careful restric- 
tions on the amount of powder, with good blocks 
for building, quite an assortment of carpenter's 
tools, a work-bench good enough, printing ma- 
terials ad libitum from my father's printing-office, 
furnished endless occupation. 

Before I attempt any account of the home life 
which grew out of such conditions I must make a 



46 A New England Boyhood 

little excursus to describe the domestic service of 
those days, quite different from ours. I wish par- 
ticularly to describe Fullum, who outlived the class 
to which he belonged, and had, when he died, in 
1886, long been its last representative. 

The few New England children who still read 
the Rollo books will have pleasant remembrances 
oi Jonas and Beechmit, in whom Mr. Jacob Abbott 
has presented for posterity the hired boy of New 
England country life. In life in a little town like 
Boston this hired boy might grow to be the hired 
man, and, as in Fullum's exceptional case, might 
grow to be a hundred years old, or nearly that, 
without changing that condition. If that happened 
his presence in a family became a factor of impor- 
tance to the growing children. In the case of 
Fullum, if, as he supposed, he was born in 1790, 
he was thirty-two years old when, in 1822, he took 
me in his arms before I was an hour old. 

Fullum, then, had been a country lad, who came 
down from Worcester County to make his fortune. 
I do not know when, but it was before the time of 
the short war with England. He expected to be, 
and was, the hired boy and hired man in one and 
another Boston family. Early in the business he 
was in Mr. William Sullivan's service. He was 
driving Mr. Sullivan out of town, one day, when 
they found Roxbury Street blocked up by the roof 
of the old meeting-house, which had been blown 
into the street by the gale of September, 181 5. 
Afterward he was in Daniel Webster's service, and 



A New England Boyhood 47 

here also he took care of horses and carriages. 
He was a born tyrant, and it was ahvays intimated 
that Mr. Webster did not fancy his rule. Anyway 
he came from the Websters to us, I suppose when 
Mr. Webster went to Congress, in the autumn of 
1820. And, in one fashion or another, he lived 
with our family, as a most faithful vassal or tyrant, 
for sixty-six years from that time. I say " vassal 
or tyrant," for this was a pure piece of feudalism ; 
and in the feudal system., as I have often had to 
say, the vassal is often a tyrant, while the master is 
almost always a slave. So is it that the memories 
of my boyhood are all mixed up with memories of 
Fullum. 

I have spoken of him in connection with Miss 
Whitney's school. Here was a faithful man Fri- 
day, who would have died for any of us, so strong 
was his love for us, yet who insisted on rendering 
his service very much in his own way. If my 
father designed a wooden horse for me, to be run 
on four wheels, after the fashion of what were 
called velocipedes in those days, he would make 
the drawings, but it would be Fullum's business to 
take them to the carpenter's and see the horse 
made. If w^e were to have heavy hoops from 
water-casks, Fullum was the person who conducted 
the negotiation for them. There was no harm in 
the tutorship to which we were thus intrusted. 
He never used a profane or impure word while he 
was with us children; and as he was to us an 
authority in all matters of gardening, of carpentry, 



48 A New England Boyhood 

of driving and the care of horses, we came to 
regard him as, in certain lines, omniscient and 
omnipotent. If now the reader will bear in mind 
that this omniscient and omnipotent person, at once 
the Hercules and the Apollo of our boyhood, could 
not read, write, or spell so well as any child four 
years old who had been twelve months at Miss Whit- 
ney's school, that reader may understand why a cer- 
tain scorn of book-learning sometimes stains these 
pages, otherwise so pure. And if the same reader 
should know that this same Fullum always spoke 
in superlatives, and multiplied every figure with 
which he had to do by hundreds or by thousands, 
he may have a key to a certain habit of exaggera- 
tion which has been detected in the present writer. 
"They was ten thousand men tryin' to git in. But 
old Reed, he would n't let um." This would be 
his way of describing the effort of four or five men 
to enter some place from which Reed, the one 
constable of Boston, meant to keep them out. 

The reader must excuse this excursus, for I 
think it necessary. I think it necessary for the 
civilized child to be kept in touch, in his childhood, 
with animals and with savages. Fullum was the 
person through whom savage life touched ours. 
To Fullum, largely, we owed it that we were neither 
prigs nor dudes. We had no cats, nor dogs, nor 
birds; and FullunVe place in these reminiscences 
is far more important than is that of any pet, any 
school-master, or any minister. 

The oldest child of " us four " was but four years 



A New England Boyhood 49 

and nine months older than the youngest. She 
had, as I have said, received, and deserved, at 
Miss Whitney's a medal given to the " most amia- 
ble." Next to her came a boy, then another girl, 
and then this writer. The movements of " us four" 
had much in common; but at school and in most 
plays the boys made one unit and the girls another, 
to report every evening to one another. It is to 
the boyhood experiences that these pages belong. 
But it was a Persian and Median rule of that 
household, which I recommend to all other house- 
holds, that after tea there were to be no noisy 
games. The children must sit down at the table 
— there was but one — and occupy themselves 
there till bedtime. It has been well said that the 
ferocity of infancy is such that, were its strength 
equal to its will, it would long ago have ex- 
terminated the human race. This is true. And 
it is to be remarked, also, that the strength of 
infancy, and of boyhood and girlhood, is very 
great. Thus is it that, unless some strict rules 
are laid down for limiting its use and the places of 
its exhibition, and kept after they are laid down, 
the death of parents, and of all persons who have 
passed the age of childhood, may be expected at 
any moment. One of such rules was this of which 
I have spoken. 

Everybody of whom we knew anything dined 
at one or two o'clock in Boston then. After dinner 
men went back to their places of business. At six, 
or possibly as late as seven in the summer, came 

4 



50 A New England Boyhood 

" tea." After tea, as I have said, the children of 
this household gathered round the table. Fullum 
came in and took away the tea things, folded the 
cloth and put it away. Our mother then drew up 
her chair to the drawer of the table, probably with 
a baby in her arms awaiting the return of its nurse. 
We four drew up our chairs on the other sides. 
Then we might do as we chose — teetotum games, 
cards of all sorts, books, drawing, or evening 
lessons, if there were any such awful penalty 
resulting from the sin of Adam and Eve. But 
nobody might disturb anyone else. 

Drawing was the most popular of the occupa- 
tions, and took the most of our time and thought. 
The provisions for it were very simple, and there 
was only the faintest pretence at instruction. 
There was one particular brand of lead pencils, sold 
by one particular grocer in West Street at twelve 
cents a dozen. These were bought by us at this 
wholesale rate, and kept in the drawer. One piece 
of India rubber was also kept there for the crowd. 
As we gathered at the table, a quarter-sheet of 
foolscap was given to each child and to each 
guest — as regularly as a bit of butter had been 
given half an hour before — and one pencil. 

The reader must imagine the steady flow of 
voices. " Who 's got the India rubber? " " Here 
it is under the Transcript." " This horse looks as 
if he were walking on foot-balls." " Oh, you 
must n't draw his shoes ; you never see his shoes ! " 
"I wish I knew how to draw a chaise." "I don't 



A New England Boyhood 51 

see how they make pictures of battles. My smoke 
covers up all the soldiers." Battle pieces, indeed, 
were, as usual with children, the favorite com- 
positions. We were not so far from the last war 
with England as the children of to-day are from 
the Civil War. 

Perhaps two of us put together our paper, folded 
it and pinned it in the fold, and then made a mag- 
azine. Of magazines there were two — The New 
England Herald, composed and edited by the two 
elders of the group, and TJie Public Informer, by 
my sister Lucretia and me. I am afraid that the 
name "Public Informer" was suggested wickedly 
to us little ones, when we did not know that those 
words carry a disagreeable meaning. But when 
we learned this, afterwards, we did not care. I 
think some of the Everetts, my uncles, had had 
a boy newspaper with the same name. When 
things ran with perfect regularity The New Eng- 
land Herald was read at the breakfast-table one 
Monday morning, and The Public Informer the 
next Monday morning. But this was just as it 
might happen. They were published when the 
editors pleased, as all journals should be, and 
months might go by without a number. And 
there was but one copy of each issue. It would 
be better if this could be said of some other 
journals. 

Once a year prizes were offered at school for 
translations or original compositions. We always 
competed, not to say were made to compete, by 



52 A New England Boyhood 

the unwritten law of the family. This law was 
simply that we could certainly do anything if we 
wanted to and tried. I remember a long rhyth- 
mical version I made of the story of the flood, in 
Ovid, and another of Phaeton. Where Dryden 
makes Jupiter say, " Short exhortations need," I 
remember that my halting line jumbled along into 
the ten syllables, " Long exhortations are not 
needed here." I stinted myself in this translation 
to four lines before dinner and four lines after 
tea; and by writing eight lines thus, in fifty days 
I accomplished the enterprise. I would come 
home from the swimming school ten minutes 
earlier because this translation was to be made; 
and, while Fullum was setting the table for din- 
ner, I would stand at the sideboard. There was 
always an inkstand on it, with two or three quill 
pens. I took out the poem from the upper 
drawer of the sideboard, which I never see to 
this moment without thinking of Ovid. Then I 
wrote my four lines, such as they were, put the 
manuscript away again, and proceeded to dinner. 

Other boys and other girls liked to come in to 
such an evening congress as I have described, but 
nothing was changed in the least because the vis- 
itor came, excepting that room was made at the 
table. He or she had a quarter-sheet of foolscap, 
like the others. 

This literature is connected with that of the 
world by one reminiscence, which belongs as late 
as some of the very last of these evening sessions. 



A New England Boyhood 53 

One evening my father came in from his room, 
which was next to that we sat in, with the London 
Morning CJiro7iiclc. He pointed out an article 
and said: "Read that to them, Edward; it will 
make them laugh." And I read the first account 
of Sam Wcller as he revealed himself to Mr. Pick- 
wick. Of course we all laughed, as thousands 
have done since. But I said sadly : *' What a 
shame that we shall never hear of Savi Wellcr 
again ! " This must have been in the college 
vacation of the spring of 1837. 

I must not give the idea, however, by speaking 
of these evenings thus that our lives were spe- 
cially artistic or literary. They were devoted to 
play, pure and simple, with no object but having 
a good time. The principal part of the attics — 
or, as we called them, garrets — in every house 
we lived in was surrendered to us boys. In Tre- 
mont Place we had the valuable addition of a dark 
cockloft over the garret chambers. It had no 
windows, but was all the better place to sit and 
tell stories in. Then we controlled the stairs to 
the roof, and we spent a good deal of time, in 
the summer days, on the ridge-pole. There were 
not twenty houses in Boston on higher land, so 
that from this point we commanded a good view 
of the harbor. I was amused the other day when 
an infantile correspondent of a New York news- 
paper asked how Napoleon could have used a 
telegraph before what is called Mr. Morse's in- 
vention, for as early as 1831 we read all the tele- 



54 A New England Boyhood 

graphic signals of all the vessels arriving in Boston 
harbor, and the occasional semaphoric signals on 
the lookout on Central Wharf. 

About the year 1830, under the pressure of the 
" march of intellect," were published some books 
for young children from which the present gener- 
ation is profiting largely. There were " The Boy's 
Own Book," "The Girl's Own Book," "The 
American Girl's Own Book," and "The Young 
Lady's Own Book," each of them excellent in its 
way. I think " The Boy's Own Book," which has 
since been published with the double title "An 
Encyclopaedia for Boys," led the way in this 
affair; and I still regard it as rather the best of 
the series. It had subdivisions for indoor games, 
outdoor games, gymnastics, chemistry, chess, rid- 
dles, riding, walking, and I think driving, boxing, 
and fencing. Perhaps there were more heads, but 
these were those which occupied our attention 
most. Somebody made me a New Year's present 
of this book in the year 1830 or 1831, and from 
that moment it was the text-book of the attic. 
Professor Andrews and President Eliot would feel 
their hair growing gray, if for five minutes they 
were obliged to read the chemistry which soaked 
into us from this book. Whoever wrote it still 
used the old nomenclature a good deal. We 
knew nothing of HO, and little of the proportions 
in which they go into the constitution of things. 
We read of "oil of vitriol" and "muriatic acid," 
and had other antiquarian names for agents and 



A New England Boyhood 55 

reagents. All the same, the book gave us experi- 
ments which we could try — taught us how to 
manufacture fireworks in a fashion, and even sug- 
gested to us the painting of our own magic lantern 
slides. Our apparatus was of the most limited 
kind. It was a high festival day when one went 
down to Gibbens's grocer's shop and bought for 
three cents an empty Florence flask; this was 
the retort of that simple chemistry. In connec- 
tion with this, like all other boys of that time 
known to me, we made what were called electrical 
machines, which gave us good sparks and Leyden 
jar shocks quite sufficient to satisfy the guests 
who visited us. 

It is in connection with one of these machines 
that I remember one of my mother's gospels. I 
was trying to catch a fly, to give him an electric 
shock, and she would not permit me. I pleaded 
in vain that it would not hurt him, but she said : 
" It would certainly not give him pleasure, and it 
might give him pain." 

My father was a civil engineer, somewhat in 
advance of his time. He was the first person to 
propose the railroad system of Massachusetts; 
and that system would not be what it is, but for 
his work for it, in season and out of season. I 
cannot remember the time when we did not have 
a model railway in the house ; in earlier years it 
was in the parlor, so that he might explain to 
visitors what was meant by a car running upon 
rails. I can still see the sad, incredulous look, 



56 A New England Boyhood 

which I understood then as well as I should now, 
with which some intelligent person listened kindly, 
and only in manner implied that it was a pity that 
so intelligent a man as he should go crazy. His 
craziness, fortunately, led his associates, and in the 
year 183 1, after endless reverses, a charter was 
given for the incorporation of the Boston and 
Worcester Railway. In the earlier proposals for 
such work it was always suggested that horses 
should be the moving power. In point of fact 
the first railway, which carried the Ouincy granite 
from Quincy to the sea, was operated by the 
weight of the descending trains, which pulled up 
the empty cars. I was with him, as a little boy, 
sitting on a box in the chaise, when he drove out 
once to see the newly laid Quincy track, and I per- 
fectly remember his trying with his foot the steadi- 
ness of the rail where it crosses the road to 
Quincy. His tastes, of course, led ours. There 
was a lathe in the house, which we were permitted 
to run under severe conditions ; and we very early 
made our own locomotives, which were propelled 
by whalebone springs. 

But the carriage we liked most was the " float." 
I have never seen it in the plays of other boys, 
though perhaps it is well known. For a good 
float you want a board a foot wide, an inch thick, 
and four feet long. You want two rollers, which 
had better be of hard wood, each a foot long and 
an inch or more in diameter; two inches would be 
better than one, but you take what you can get; 



A New England Boyhood 57 

a broomstick furnishes two or three good ones. 
Placing these rollers two feet apart on the ground, 
you put the float upon them, with one roller at 
the end, and the other in the middle. You then 
seat yourself carefully on the board, having 
two paddles in your hands, made from shingles. 
With these two paddles you will find that you can 
propel yourself over any floor of reasonable 
smoothness. You can even pass a threshold, and 
you can run into the most unexpected corners. If 
you have a companion on another float in the 
same room, you can have naval battles, or you 
can go to the assistance of shipwrecked crews. 
You can go forward or you can go backward, 
every now and then running a roller out, but 
skilfully placing it under the float at such an angle 
as will direct you in the way in which you wish to 
go afterwards. For this game or sport you should 
not have too many companions; you should have 
a good large attic or barn floor, and you should 
have unlimited patience. You can make a float, 
of course, out of a museum door, or out of any 
plank that happens to be going. I remember 
once, when we were hard pressed, one of my com- 
panions went to sea in a soap box. But what I 
have described is the ideal float for young people. 
We played all the tame games, such as checkers, 
chess, loto, battledoor and shuttlecock, graces, 
vingt-et-un, cup and ball, coronella, and the like, 
but I think under a certain protest. For that 
matter, I danced under the same protest. I re- 



58 A New England Boyhood 

garded all these as concessions to the social order 
in which we lived, and I obeyed that social order 
as I did in going to school. But precisely as I 
looked upon school with a certain sense of con- 
descension, I think we all looked upon these games 
as being something provided for an average 
public, while we supposed that all children of 
sense invented their own games. 

I have never, by the way, seen in print the state- 
ment that our teetotum games of that day were a 
survival of games of the same kind running well 
back into the dark ages. In the great German 
museum at Nuremberg I saw such games of as 
early a date, I think, as the year 1300. Any boy 
who will look at his teetotum game of to-day, if 
such things still exist, will probably find that it 
comes out at 63. This means that 6^ is the 
" grand climacteric," in the old theory of the 
climacterics ; and then, if he will look back, he will 
find that at 7, 14, 21, 28, and so on are the other 
climacterics. All this belongs to those happy 
ages which knew nothing of modern science. 

I have stated already the absolute rule that we 
must report at home before we went anywhere 
to play after school. I think this rule affected 
our lives a great deal more than my mother meant 
it should in laying it down. She simply wanted 
to know at certain stages of the day where her 
children were. I do not recollect that she ever 
forbade our going anywhere, where we wanted to. 
But practically the rule worked thus : We rushed 



A New England Boyhood 59 

home from school, very hkely with a plan on foot 
for the Common, or for some combined movement 
with the other boys. We went into the house to 
report. There was invariably gingerbread ready 
for us, which was made in immense quantities for 
the purpose. This luncheon was ready not only 
for us, but for any boys we might bring with us. 
When once we arrived at home the home attrac- 
tions asserted themselves. There was some chem- 
ical experiment to be continued, or there was 
some locomotive to be displayed to another boy, 
or there had come in a new number of \\\& Juve- 
nile Miseellajiy. In a word, we were seduced up 
into the attic, and up in the attic we were very apt 
to stay. I once asked my mother what she sup- 
posed the mothers of the other boys said who 
came home with us and partook of luncheon and 
entered into our aftairs. She simply said that that 
was their lookout, it was not hers. She was per- 
fectly ready to provide luncheon for the crowd. 
I rather think that the other mothers knew that 
the boys were well off. 

There were but few companions who were 
admitted into the profoundest mysteries of the 
attic. Edward Webster was one, who afterward 
died in command of a regiment in the Mexican 
War. My cousin John Durivage was one, and 
there were others whose companionship was not 
as long or as steady as that of these two. In 
the year 1829 my brother Nathan, who, as I have 
said, was my adviser, teacher, companion, and 



6o A New England Boyhood 

inspirer in everything, being three years older 
than myself, went to the newly established English 
High School for two years. Here his smattering 
of science and taste for mechanics were fostered, 
and from such a laboratory as was there he 
brought home suggestions for our workshop. 
I have always known that I am thus largely 
indebted, at second hand, to the suggestions which 
he received from Mr. Miles and Mr. Sherwin 
there. And this is not a bad instance of the way 
in which the power of a great educator extends 
itself beyond the lives of the pupils whom he has 
under his eye at school. 

My father was editor of the Daily Advertiser ; 
and in that day this meant that he owned the 
whole printing plant, engaged all the printers, 
and printed his own newspaper. He was never a 
practical printer, but, with his taste for mechanics, 
he understood all the processes of the business. 
Not unnaturally this grew into his establishing a 
book printing-office, which did as good work in 
its time as was done anywhere. The first 
American edition of Cicero's " Republic," after 
the discovery of that book in a Pompeian 
manuscript by Mai, was printed by him. 
Naturally he went forward into the study of 
power-press printing, and, at his suggestion, 
Daniel Treadwell made the first power presses 
which worked to advantage in this country. In 
the years between 1820 and 1825 the Boston 
Mill-dam was constructed, for the purpose of 



A New England Boyhood 6i 

making a water power out of the tide power of 
the Back Bay. My father then introduced power- 
press printing there, and that printing-office was 
maintained until the year 1836. When the time 
came he was president of the first type foundry 
in New England, perhaps in America. All the 
arrangements for these contrivances were, of 
course, interesting to his sons. So, as I have 
said, we had type from the printing-office, and 
we all learned to set type and to arrange it. 
When, in 1834, my brother went to college, and 
I was left alone, I used to repair every day to the 
book office for my printing, and there learned the 
case and all the processes of imposing scientifi- 
cally. I used to work off my own books on a 
hand press. I have never lost the memories of 
the case, and am rather fond of saying now that, 
if it were necessary, I could support my family 
as a compositor. 

I would not have gone into this detail but that 
I am always urging people to let their boys 
have printing apparatus in early life, because I 
think it is such a good educator. The absolute 
accuracy that is necessary is good for a boy. 
The solid fact that 144 ems will go into a certain 
space, and will require that space, and that no 
prayers nor tears, hopes nor fears, will change 
that solid fact — this is most important. I do not 
mean the mere convenience to an author of being 
able to talk familiarly with the compositor who 
has his book in hand : that is a good thing. But 



62 A New England Boyhood 

I mean that human hfe in general has lessons to 
teach which every compositor requires which few 
other experiences of life teach so well. I think 
also that, as a study of English style, the school 
of Franklin and Horace Greeley is a good one. 

For home reading we had the better magazines 
of that day, including the English New Monthly, 
which was then under the editorial charge of 
Campbell. We had the weekly literary news- 
papers which were beginning, such as the Nczu 
Wor/d, edited by Park Benjamin ; the Spirit of 
the Times, which had a great deal of sporting 
news ; the Albion, a weekly which was made 
up of extracts from good foreign papers. I 
remember the issue of the last of Scott's novels — 
" Anne of Geierstein," " Castle Dangerous," and, 
" Count Robert of Paris." There was a sort of 
grief in the family, as if a near friend had died, or 
as if some one had gone crazy, when " Castle 
Dangerous" and "Count Robert" appeared, 
because they were so poor. The last part of 
" Harry and Lucy " was published within our day, 
and we read of those children almost as if they 
were personal friends — a good deal as a younger 
generation has read of Rollo and Jonas, and a 
certain Susy in the Susy books. Of course the 
physical science in " Harry and Lucy " had its 
part in our philosophical experiments. Miss Edge- 
worth's " Helen " was published within my memory, 
and we had friends who occasionally brought in 
letters from the Edgeworths and read them. 



A New England Boyhood 63 

We were all instinct with the love of nature and 
of the country, and of our excursions outside the 
old peninsula of Boston I will say something in 
another chapter. But we could hardly have 
lived without some sort of gardening at home — 
certainly not under my mother's lead. In the 
yard at the corner of School Street there was 
a very, very little space where we could plant 
seeds, and did. I still regard bur-cucumber as my 
own discovery, — as I do the berries of Virginia 
Creeper, — and I look upon it as Sir Stamford 
Raffles may have looked on Rafflesia. But when 
we came to Tremont Place there was no such 
space, and we were obliged to do as they did 
at Babylon. We each, therefore, had on the 
"shed," which was made for the drying of clothes, 
a raisin box filled with earth for our horticultural 
experiments. You can do a good deal with a 
raisin box, if you are careful and not too 
ambitious. Practically I planted morning-glories 
along one long side, with sweet peas between. 
These were to climb up on the posts. There is 
a tradition in the family that, when I w^as a boy 
of eight, I threw over a morning-glory to a baby 
six or eight months old, who was being carried 
by in the street, whom I married twenty-two years 
after. I need not say that this tradition, well 
founded as a matter of art, was invented by 
myself, has no foundation in fact excepting that 
"it might have been." Behind the vines divide 
your box into even parts. The right-hand side 



64 A New England Boyhood 

is for agriculture : there you will plant your 
radishes and pepper-grass. The left-hand side 
is for flowers: here you can put in four rows; 
for instance, touch-me-nots, flytrap, Venus's look- 
ing-glass, and ten-week stocks. I think we 
generally selected our seeds from something 
which seemed romantic in the name more than 
with any reference to what would be produced. 
I do not mean that one had the same things one 
summer which he had the year before. 

These gardens, covering perhaps a square foot 
and a half each, were of the greatest interest to us. 
I remember we were very much amused when some 
children on the other side of the way, who lived in 
one of those elegant houses where the Bellevue 
now stands, whose terraces ran up the grades of 
the old Beacon Hill, said to us that they envied us 
our raisin boxes on the shed. From the same 
shed I observed the annular eclipse of the sun in 
the spring of 1829. 

CHAPTER V 

OUT OF DOORS 

We were close by the Common. The Common 
was still recognized as 

1. A pasture for cows. 

2. A play-ground for children. 

3. A place for beating carpets. 

4. A training ground for the militia. 



A New England Boyhood 65 

It had served these purposes, or some of them, 
for two hundred years, since Blackstone had first 
turned in his cows among its savins and black- 
berries and rocks to pick up a scanty Hving. In 
modern days it had not been fenced until 1815, 
After the war with England there was some money 
left from a popular subscription for fortifying the 
harbor, which the Virginian dynasties had, in their 
way, neglected. This money was used for making 
a wooden fence around the Common. The rails 
of this fence were hexagonal — two or three inches 
in diameter, perhaps. If a flat side were on top, 
as was generally the case, it made a good seat for 
boys, as they sat on the top rail with their feet on 
the second. If the corner came uppermost it was 
not so good. The fence was double — inside the 
mall and outside. When a muster took place, or 
Artillery Election, or when the Sacs and Foxes 
danced on the Common, the space within the in- 
ner fence was cleared. Then boys and girls sat on 
it to witness the sports within, and those taller stood 
in rows behind. 

There cannot be a square yard of the Common 
on w'hich I have not stood or stepped, and the 
same could be said of most boys of that time. As 
for the cows, we saw but little of them. I cannot 
think that in our time there were ever fifty at once 
there. They retired to the parts near Charles 
Street, with which we had less, though much, to 
do. So did the people who beat carpets. Practi- 
cally the Common was ours to work our own sweet 

5 



66 A New England Boyhood 

will upon. On musters, and on the two election 
days and Independence Day, we shared it with the 
rest of the town. On those days " Old Reed " 
would appear with his constable's pole; but on 
other days it was ours, and ours only. 

Even Mrs. Child, in her Juvenile Miscellany, 
gave the impression that the coasting scene, in 
which the Latin School boys defied General Gage, 
began with coasting on the Common. But she 
was wholly wrong there. In 1775 no boy went 
out of town to coast on the Common. And the 
famous embassy which the Latin School boys sent 
to General Haldimand, to complain that their rights 
were violated, negotiated about a coast which went 
down Beacon Street, across Tremont Street, and 
down School Street, opposite their school. The 
story was told me by Mr. Robins, the last survivor 
of the delegation, in the j^ear 18 — . 

Fifty-five years later we coasted on Beacon Street 
when we dared. But this was in face of the ordi- 
nances of the young city. In one of Dr. Jacob 
Bigelow's funny poems, printed in the Advertiser 
in 1820, he made himself our spokesman: 

Mr. Heyward, Mr. Heyward, be a little kinder. 
Can't you wink a little bit, or be a little blinder .? 
Can't you let us coasting fellows have a little fun ? 
Were you born old, or was 't your way all childish sports to 
shun ? 

Did you ne'er know how slick it is to coast from top to 

bottom ? 
And can't we use our ironers and planers, now we've got 'em ? 



A New England Boyhood 67 

Five dollars makes our pas look cross — that 's proper bad, 

you know ; 
Our youth will soon be gone, alas! and sooner still the 



snow. 



Caleb Heyward was the police officer of the day, 
followed at a later time by " Old Reed." The 
town needed but one. 

Practically we went to the Common for coasting. 
The smaller boys made a coast on Park Street 
mall. But the great coast was from the foot of 
Walnut Street, where a well-marked path runs 
now, leaving the great elm on the right as you 
went down. 

This may be my last chance to put on paper a 
note of Lord Percy's encampment. His brigade, 
in the winter of 1775-76, and perhaps of the pre- 
vious year, was encamped in tents, in a line stretch- 
ing south-west from the head of West Street. As 
the weather grew cold the tents were doubled, and 
the space between the two canvas roofs was filled 
with straw. The circles made by such tents and 
the life in them showed themselves in a different 
color of the grass for a hundred years after Percy's 
time. The line is now almost all taken up by what 
I may call the highway from the Providence station 
down town. 

As the snow melted, and the elms blossomed, 
and the grass came, the Common opened itself 
to every sort of game. We played marbles in 
holes in the malls. We flew kites everywhere, not 
troubled, as boys would be now, by trees on the 



68 A New England Boyhood 

"cross-paths, for there were no such trees. The 
old elm and a large willow by the Frog Pond, 
were the only trees within the pentagon made by 
the malls and the burial-ground. Kite-flying was, 
as it is, a science ; and on a fine summer day, with 
south-west winds, a line of boys would be camped 
in groups, watching or tending their favorite kites 
as they hung in the air over Park Street. Occa- 
sionally a string would break. It was a matter of 
honor to save your twine. I remember following 
my falling kite, with no clue but the direction in 
which I saw it last, till I found that the twine 
was lying across a narrow court which opened 
where the Albion Hotel is now. There were two 
rows of three-story houses which made the court, 
and my twine festooned it, supported by the 
ridge-poles of the roofs on either side. I rang 
a door-bell, stated my case, and ran up, almost 
without permission, into the attic. Here I climbed 
out of the attic window, ran up the roof as Teddy 
the Tyler might have done, and drew in the coveted 
twine. For the pecuniary value of the twine we 
cared little; but it would have been, in a fashion, 
disgraceful to lose it. 

Boats on the Frog Pond were much what they 
are now. The bottom of the pond was not paved 
until 1848. There were no frogs, so far as I know, 
but some small horned pout were left there, for 
which boys fished occasionally. The curb around 
the pond was laid in Mr. Quincy's day, in 1823; 
I mean when he was mayor. To provide the 



A New England Boyhood 69 

stone the last of the boulders on the Common 
were blasted. In old days, as appears from 
Sewall, they were plenty; he blasted enough 
for the foundations of a barn. I think the old 
Hancock House was built from such boulders. 
Among those destroyed was the Wishing Stone. 
This stood — or so Dr. Shurtleff told me — where 
two paths now join, a little east of the foot of 
Walnut Street. If you went round it backward 
nine times, and repeated the Lord's Prayer back- 
ward, whatever you wished would come to pass.^ 
I once proposed to the mayor and aldermen to go 
round the Frog Pond nine times backward and 
wish that the city debt might be reduced fifty per 
cent. But they have never had the faith to try. 
Mr. Quincy proposed that the Frog Pond should 
be called Crescent Lake. But nobody ever really 
called it so. I have seen the name on maps, but 
it is now forgotten. 

Charles Street was new in those days, and the 
handsome elms which shade the Charles Street 
mall were young trees, just planted, in 1825. By 
the building of the mill-dam, about that time, the 
water was shut out from the southern side of 
Charles Street. There existed a superstition 
among the boys that 'law did not extend to the 
flat, because it was below high-water mark. On 

^ A charming friend tells me that to repeat the prayer back- 
ward, is not to say, " Amen, ever and forever, glory and power, 
etc., etc.," but to say, " Thou who art not our Father, who dost 
not live in heaven, may thy name be cursed, etc., etc." 



70 A New England Boyhood 

holidays, therefore, there would be shaking of 
props and other games of mild gambling there, 
which " Old Reed " did not permit on the upland. 
This was, of course, a ridiculous boyish supersti- 
tion. In those days, however, we had a large 
number of seafaring men, who brought with 
them foreign customs. Among others was the 
use of " props," a gambling game which the boys 
had introduced perfectly innocently as an element 
in playing marbles. I dare say people played 
props for money on the dried surface of the Back 
Bay. 

Of all the entertainments of the Common, how- 
ever, nothing, to our mind, compared with the 
facilities which the malls gave for driving hoop and 
for post-ofhces. The connection of the two may 
not be understood at first, and I will describe it. 
When the season for driving hoops came round — 
for, as Mr. Howells has remarked, such things are 
regulated by seasons as much as is the coming of 
apple blossoms — we examined last year's hoops, 
and, if they had come to grief, Fullum negotiated 
some arrangements by which we had large hoops 
from sea-going casks. I see none such now. 
These hoops were as distinguished in their way as 
Suiiol is to-day in hers (1892). My hoop was 
named Whitefoot. With these hoops it was our 
business to carry a daily mail. 

The daily mail was made chiefly from small 
newspapers, which were cut from the leading 
columns of larger ones. In an editor's house we 



A New England Boyhood 71 

had plenty. The Quebec Gazette was specially 
chosen, because its column head was a small copy 
of its larger head, and squares cut from that 
column made very good little papers. With a 
supply of these folded, we started at the head of 
Park Street, two or three of us, secret as the grave, 
to leave the day's mail. 

No, I will not, even after sixty years, tell where 
those post-offices were. I have no doubt that the 
ashes of the Quebec Gazette are now fertilizing 
some of those elms. But one was near Joy Street, 
one was in a heart which some landscape gardener 
had cut in the turf near Spruce Street, one was 
half-way along Charles Street. They were holes 
in the ground, or caches between the roots of trees. 
At each was a box — or, in one case, two tight- 
fitting oyster shells — which received the mail. 
From it the yesterday's mail was taken to the next 
ofhce. 

When the mail-riders with their hoops arrived at 
one of these post-offices they threw themselves 
negligently upon the ground, as if tired ; but one 
dug with care for the box buried below. Of 
course he found it, unless some fatal landscape 
gardener, of whom the Common knew but few, 
had interfered. When found, the paper or letter 
from the last office was left here, the sods or stones 
or sand were replaced, and the cautious mail-riders 
galloped on. At the end of a winter the chances 
were worse for finding a mail, or after a long rain 
or vacation. 



72 A New England Boyhood 

There was then no mall on Boylston Street. 
The burial-ground, with a brick wall, ran close to 
the street, and there was no sidewalk on that side, 
so that we generally crossed by the line of Percy's 
encampments. And to all boys, I imagine, that 
little corner where the deer park is was compara- 
tively little known. 

It is, however, a waste of honest paper to be 
telling of such trifles about the Common, when its 
great importance was as a training field, or for 
holidays, as one may read in Sewall's Diary, and 
in the old votes of the town. There were four 
holidays in the year — 'Lection proper, Artillery 
Election (generally called 'Tillery 'Lection), the 
Fourth of July (called Independence Day, I think, 
more than it is now), and, in October, Muster, or 
the Fall Training. By good luck, of course, 
Lafayette might come along, or General Jackson, 
or the Sacs and Foxes might dance, but these 
could not be expected. 

Since I first printed these notes, a dozen letters 
have informed me that people have forgotten who 
the Sacs and Foxes were. The Sacs and Foxes 
were an important branch of the great Chippewa 
race, and they lived in Northern Illinois, in the 
region which is now called Wisconsin, and farther 
north. Under the lead of Black Hawk, a famous 
fighter, and Keokuk, they made head against the 
settlers in that region, and their power was only 
broken by a military campaign, in which the 
United States Army repressed them. It was then 



A New England Boyhood 73 

thought that it would be a good thing for the 
Indians of the frontier to show them the greatness 
of the cities of the East. So Black Hawk and 
Keokuk and some other braves were brought 
round from Washington to the Northern cities, 
and they appeared in Boston in the autumn of 
1838. Governor Everett received them at the 
State House, and they made speeches to him, and 
he made speeches to them. After this they 
danced a war dance, or what was called such, on 
the Common, to the great delight of all the people 
of the neighborhood. 

And alas! by a utilitarian revolution, in 1831, 
the real old Election Day was changed from the 
last Wednesday in May to the ist of January. 
When my father confessed to me that he had him- 
self voted for the change in the constitution of 
Massachusetts, I think he did it with a certain 
shame. I was at that time nine years old, so that 
I could not rebuke him as the vote seemed to 
require. But he knew, and they all knew, that if 
the vote had been submitted to the children of 
Boston, no such innovation would have been made. 

Unlearned readers, unhappily not born in 
Massachusetts, must be informed that, under the 
first charter of Massachusetts, " yearly once in the 
year forever after, namely, the last Wednesday in 
Easter term yearly, the Governor, deputy gover- 
nor, and assistants of the said company, and all 
other officers shall be in the General Court duly 
chosen." Under the charter of the province, 



74 A New England Boyhood 

given by William and Mary, the last Wednesday 
in May was fixed for the beginning of the political 
year ; and when the constitution of the State was 
made, in 1779, the same date was retained. The 
General Court then met — that is the name to 
this day of the legislature of Massachusetts ; in 
the first charter it meant what we should call a 
stockholders' meeting. In old days the General 
Court elected the Governor on this day; so Win- 
throp, Dudley, and all the early governors were 
elected. Under the constitution the election re- 
turns were examined on this day, and perhaps 
reported on. Anyway the legislature met, re- 
ferred them to a committee, and, under escort of 
the Cadets, who were the Governor's guard, they 
marched to the Old South Meeting-House to hear 
the election sermon. 

With these intricacies of government I need not 
say the boys of Boston had nothing to do. What 
was truly important was the festivity, principally 
on the Common, of Election Day. Early in the 
morning, perhaps even Tuesday evening, hucksters 
of every kind began to put up their tables, tents, 
and stalls on each side of the Tremont Street mall, 
and, to a less extent, on the other malls. On the 
Common itself a mysterious man — in a mysteri- 
ous octagonal house painted green and red, as I 
remember — displayed camera views of the scene. 
Of these I speak from hearsay, for I never had 
money enough to pay for admission to this secret 
chamber. 



A New England Boyhood 75 

I found in Hawthorne's "English Note-book" 
some curious bits of information about fairs in 
England, which reminded me, queerly, of some of 
these customs of our New England holidays on 
the Common. 

To prepare for these festivities every child in 
Boston expected " 'Lection money." 'Lection 
money was money given specifically to be spent 
on the Common on Election Day. The day be- 
fore Election my mother sent Fullum to the office 
for three or four dollars' worth of silver; for she 
knew that all her train of vassals, so far as they 
could pretend to be children, would expect " 'Lec- 
tion money" from her. First, she had her own 
children, to whom she gave twelve and a half 
cents each. There was a considerable number of 
nephews and nieces who might or might not look 
in ; but if they did, each of them was also sure to 
have a " ninepence," which was the name given to 
the Spanish piece which was half a "quarter 
dollar." American silver coinage was still very 
rare. 

It may be of use to young orators, getting ready 
to speak on the silver question, to know that when, 
in 1652, the colony of Massachusetts Bay assumed 
the royal privilege of the mint and coined its own 
silver, the leaders thought they could keep this 
silver at home by making the coin two-thirds the 
weight of the king's silver. The Massachusetts 
shilling, therefore, was two-thirds the weight of 
the English shilling. Six shillings went to the 



76 A New England Boyhood 

Spanish dollar. It proved that Spanish coin 
became very largely the currency of the colonies, 
and so of the States, for long years after indepen- 
dence. We took the Spanish dollar for our unit 
when we made a national currency. Twelve and a 
half cents of that currency, the old Spanish real 
piece, became worth ninepence in the Massachu- 
setts standard ; and fourpence-halfpenny and nine- 
pence, the half-real and real of the early time, 
were the coins most familiar to children. The 
" piece of eight" in "Robinson Crusoe" is a dollar 
piece, amounting to eight of our ninepences. 
Old-fashioned New Englanders will to this hour 
speak of seventy-five cents as " four-and-six- 
pence," or of thirty-seven and a half cents as 
" two-and-threepence." These measures are in 
pine-tree currency. 

To come back to Election money. Other 
retainers expected it. There were families of 
black children, who never appeared at any other 
time, who would come in with smiling faces and 
make a little call. Mother would give each one 
his or her ninepence. On the other hand, if in the 
street I happened to meet an uncle, he would ask 
me if I did not want some Election money, and 
produce his ninepence. I never heard of" tipping" 
in any other connection, except when a boy held 
water for a horse as you rode anywhere; then 
you always gave him a bit of silver or a few 
cents. 

Thus provided with the sinews of war, we went 



A New England Boyhood jj 

up on the Common with such company as might 
have happened along — girls with girls, and boys 
with boys. The buying and selling were confined 
almost wholly to things to eat and drink; though 
there is a bad story told of me, that, having gone 
out with a quarter of a dollar one morning, I spent 
the whole of it for a leather purse, into which, for 
the rest of the day, I had nothing to put. This is 
my experience of Ben Franklin's whistle. Certain 
things were sold there which we never saw sold 
anywhere else, and which we should never have 
thought of buying anywhere else. Boston was 
then in active trade with the West Indies, more 
than it is now. You could not bring bananas in 
the long schooner voyages of that time, but we 
had cocoanuts in plenty, and occasionally a bit of 
sugarcane. I do not think I had ever seen a 
banana when I was twenty years old. 

It happened oddly enough that tamarinds, in 
the curious " original packages," were always for 
sale, and dates, of which we did not see much on 
other occasions. At home we never had oysters, 
I believe because my father did not like them ; 
but on the Common we could buy two oysters for 
a cent, and we ate them with rapture. To this 
day I doubt if a raw oyster is ever as good, as it 
was when eaten under the trees of Park Street 
mall, with vinegar and pepper and salt ad libitum, 
and this in May ! Candy of all kinds then known 
was for sale, but the kinds were limited. There 
was one manufactured form which, I am sorry to 



78 A New England Boyhood 

say, has died out. One or two dealers sold large 
medals of checkerberry stamped with a head. 
Whom this originally represented I do not know, 
but very early we all said it was John Endicott, 
because he was the first Governor of Massachu- 
setts Bay, and we called them "John Endicotts." 
I advertised in a newspaper, a few years ago, for 
anybody who knew how to make these things, but 
I had no answer. You would see sailor-looking 
men eating lobsters, but those we were quite sure 
of at home. Ginger beer and spruce beer were 
sold from funny little wheelbarrows, which had 
attractive pictures of the bottles throwing out 
the corks by their own improvised action. You 
might have a glass of spruce beer for two cents, 
and, to boys as impecunious as most of us were, 
the dealers would sell half a glass for one cent. 
Why we did not all die of the trash which we ate 
and drank on such occasions I do not know. But 
we are alive, a good many of us, to tell the story 
to this hour. 

In all this we had little thought or care for the 
election itself. Independence Day passed in much 
the same fashion. I remember, as I returned 
home from the Common, having expended every 
cent of my money, one Independence Day, I saw 
a procession of children going into Park Street 
Church. To see a church open on a week-day 
was itself extraordinary. To see children going 
in procession into a church was more extraordi- 
nary. With a disposition to find out what was 



A New England Boyhood 79 

going on I followed in the train, and went into the 
gallery. We were not orthodox at our house, but 
I had been in that meeting-house before. I soon 
perceived that this was a Sunday-school enter- 
tainment, at which I remained as long as seemed 
pleasing to me, and then retired. I have no recol- 
lection of anything that passed there, but, by 
putting the dates together, I am fond of believing 
that then and there I heard Dr. Smith's national 
song, " My Country, 't is of Thee," sung for the 
first time that it was ever sung in public. Possibly 
my untrained voice joined in the enthusiasm of the 
strain. 

It was at one of the first of the elections after 
the anniversary had been changed to January that 
an event took place which made quite a mark in 
the local history, and to which boys attached 
immense importance. Governor Lincoln had been 
escorted to the Old South Meeting-House by the 
Cadets, whose force was not large at that time. 
The escort had opened to the right and the left 
for the civic procession to pass in, and then, instead 
of following them, had repaired to the Exchange 
Coffee-House for refreshment. The commander 
had left a messenger, who was to inform him when 
the sermon approached its close, so that he might 
be ready with the escort at the door of the church 
to go back with the Governor to the State House. 
Unfortunately the preacher wound up too sud- 
denly, the hymn which followed the sermon was 
too short, and when the Governor, who was the 



8o A New England Boyhood 

prince of punctilio in such matters, came, with the 
council and the legislature, to the door, there was 
no escort. Governor Lincoln walked up Winter 
Street with the gentlemen of his personal staff, but 
without any Cadets. The colonel of the Cadets 
arrived at the church a minute too late. He put 
his men at double quick, and they fairly ran up 
Bromfield Street, and came to the corner of the 
Common in time to meet the Governor, and pre- 
sented arms. But the Governor declined to 
recognize his escort, and proceeded on the side- 
walk to the State House or his lodging-house, with 
the melancholy Cadets following as they might. 
A court-martial ensued, of which the proceedings 
are in print; and military circles and the circles of 
school-boys were highly excited about it. It was 
one of the fortunate events of my early life that I 
stumbled on the Governor and his staff as they 
walked up Winter Street on that fatal occasion. 

On the evening of Independence Day there was 
sometimes a display of fireworks on the Common; 
but the science of pyrotechnics was then but little 
advanced in America, and there was much more 
waiting than there was exhibition. My recollec- 
tions of these displays are of our always leaving to 
go home, tired out, before the successful pieces 
were shown. To the boys and girls of to-day it 
will be interesting to know that the pieces were set 
up either for spectators who stood on the hill and 
looked down toward St. Paul's Church, or near the 
foot of Walnut Street for groups of spectators 



A New England Boyhood 8i 

below, who were to look up to them there. The 
entire absence of trees from the Common inside 
the malls, enabled those in charge to make the 
stages for the fireworks just where they pleased. 

The military system of the State in those days 
required two annual parades, in which every mili- 
tiaman should appear with his gun and other 
equipments. It is by a comparatively modern 
arrangement that the State or the United States 
furnishes the arms for the militia. Under the 
simpler arrangements of the colony, and of the 
State at the beginning, every man who considered 
himself a man was obliged to have a gun, a car- 
tridge-box, a belt, a "primer,"^ and the other 
necessaries for an infantry soldier. We therefore 
had, in the attic, Fullum's gun, cartridge-box, and 
primer, which made good properties, in any 
theatricals which required the presence of an 
army. My father had been a member of the New 
England Guards, but his gun was kept in their 
armory. 

These arms the militiaman bought with his own 
money, and he must produce them once a year 
for inspection. I believe that they were shown at 
a certain spring meeting, to which comparatively 
little attention was given by boys. But in the 
autumn, every man between the ages of eighteen 
and forty-five, unless he were on the list of 
" exempts," had to appear in person, with his gun, 
belt, and cartridge-box, to show that the common- 
1 Pronounce i as in " pine." 
6 



82 A New England Boyhood 

wealth had him as a soldier, and that he knew 
something of the art of arms. 

Young men who had a real interest in the mili- 
tary art did as they do now. They volunteered 
into what were called the " volunteer companies," 
or sometimes the " flank companies." These 
companies had uniforms, had generally their own 
separate charters as fusileers, rangers, light in- 
fantry, or guards; they were proud of their his- 
tory ; the State or somebody provided them with 
armories — generally over Faneuil Hall — and 
they had frequent parades, while they had suffi- 
cient instruction for keeping up their military dis- 
cipline. All this was precisely as uniformed 
militia companies exist to-day. But now the 
other militiamen are simply on a certain register, 
which they never see and of which they know 
nothing — though they are counted to the credit 
of Massachusetts in the quota which exists at 
Washington. Then, the militiaman had to appear 
and show himself; and this he did at the annual 
training. A man knew to what company he be- 
longed. He was notified that he must attend at a 
certain place on the morning of the Fall Muster ; 
he did attend there, and thence he marched to the 
Common for the fall training. 

The military zeal of the War of 1812 had not 
wholly died out, but there was beginning to be a 
suspicion that the conditions of peace were such 
that it was not necessary for every man to be 
trained to arms. A certain ridicule, therefore, 



A New England Boyhood 83 

attached itself to what was called the " militia " in 
distinction from the " volunteer companies." Oc- 
casionally a militia company, under spirited lead, 
tried to distinguish itself by its drill, but this sel- 
dom happened. Old Boston people will remember 
a joke of that time about the Berry Street Rangers. 
The particular company, which met in front of 
Dr. Channing's church in Berry Street, chose one 
year as their captain a gentleman who, they 
thought, would let them off lightly. But he inter- 
ested himself at once in bringing up the company's 
equipment and drill, and gave them the name of 
the Berry Street Rangers, so that for some years 
we heard of their exploits in one way or another. 

The interest among young men which now goes 
largely to the keeping up of military companies 
was then expended in great measure on the volun- 
teer fire department. Still, when the fall training 
came, the interest of the boys was naturally in the 
companies which were in uniform ; and when the 
parade was formed on the Common these com- 
panies always held the right of the line, either by 
courtesy or because they were entitled to it by 
law. According as the major-general commanding 
had more or less enthusiasm there would or would 
not be a sham fight. The whole Common was 
cleared for these exercises. Of course a consider- 
able detail of melancholy sentinels was required 
to keep the boys from running in, and the princi- 
pal fights, sham or real, on these occasions, were 
their contests with these sentinels. But as the 



84 A New England Boyhood 

army to be reviewed really amounted to nearly 
one-third of the men of Boston, even after this 
large detail of sentries, there would be a consider- 
able force in the field. It seems to me that the 
line always extended, with its back to the Tremont 
Street mall, for the whole length of that mall. 
The reviewing officers would pass it, as in any 
review to-day, and then the sham fight would 
begin. We boys, sitting on the fence, criticised 
the manceuvres of this Waterloo, with such infor- 
mation on tactics as we had got from reading 
Botta's " History of the American Revolution" or 
Caesar's " Commentaries on the War with Gaul." 
I recollect a sham fight in which the hill — still 
fortified, as I have said — was defended against an 
attack. It appears to me, however, that the attacks 
were generally made by the whole force against 
an unseen enemy. This mode of fighting has its 
advantages. Practically, however, after the Ran- 
gers had been thrown out as skirmishers, and the 
difterent companies had moved backward and for- 
ward across the Common, at about five in the 
afternoon the whole line was formed again, and a 
discharge of blank cartridges began, which lasted 
till all the cartridges of all the soldiers were burned 
up. I say all the cartridges, but we would solicit 
Fullum to slip one or more cartridges into his 
pocket instead of firing them off, and on rare 
occasions he succeeded in doing this. Then there 
were superstitions that individual soldiers were 
afraid to burn their cartridges, and dropped them 



A New England Boyhood 85 

surreptitiously on the grass, so that, the next 
morning, we ahvays went over to the Common to 
see if we could not find some of these. I cannot 
recollect that any boy ever did. The actual pres- 
ence of war, as it showed itself in this discharge of 
powder, was of course very attractive, and " Mus- 
ter" had a certain value which belonged to none 
of the other holidays of the year. 

There was great antipathy in the ruling circles 
at our house to boating, in any of the forms then 
pursued in the harbor. On the other hand, my 
father and mother were both country bred, and, 
as I believe I have said, my mother was very fond 
of flowers. As soon as spring opened, in the 
earlier days, father and mother went to drive very 
often on Thursday and Saturday afternoons. This 
drive was taken in the chaise, and, for the purpose 
of the ride, a little seat was fitted in, which was in 
fact a trunk, in which mother brought home any 
wild flowers which she picked. On this trunk one 
of " us four " went, in a regular order laid down 
by the ]\Icdes and Persians. This entertainment 
of a holiday was one of the great joys of my early 
life. But, for the half-holidays which were not 
thus provided for, my brother and I took care by 
using " the means which God and nature put into 
our hands." That is to say, we walked out of 
town to such woodland generally as we had not 
explored before, until we were personally ac- 
quainted with the whole country for a circle of 
five miles' radius around the State House. 



86 A New England Boyhood 

An enterprising English surveyor named John 
G. Hales had lived in Boston long enough to make 
a good working map of the suburbs of Boston. 
He printed a little book, still known to the curious, 
on that region. He was rather in advance of the 
times, I suppose, and when he succumbed to 
adversity, my father bought from him all the 
plates and drawings of his different maps. Among 
these was the map of Boston and vicinity, which 
is still a good map, and is still regularly stolen 
from by anybody who wants to publish such a 
map, without much regard to any copyright which 
existed in the original surveys. Two or three 
times new editions of this map were published, 
and in such a case " we four " generally had more 
or less to do with the painting of the different 
towns, so that their lines might be the better 
designated. It thus happens that at this moment 
I could pass, with some credit, any competitive ex- 
amination which should turn on the township lines 
of the various towns within fifteen miles of Boston. 

But the personal knowledge, gained by tramp- 
ing through the interior circle of such towns, was 
worth much more than the painting. The Hales 
map indicated the several pieces of scrub wood- 
land which were then left, and to such woodland we 
boys regularly repaired. I need not say that such 
expeditions were encouraged at home. Whenever 
we chose to undertake one, two cents were added 
to our allowance for the purchase of luncheon. 

We always kept for such expeditions what were 



A New England Boyhood 87 

known as phosphorus-boxes, which were the first 
steps in the progress that has put the tinder-boxes 
of that day entirely out of sight. Most of the 
young people of the present day have not so 
much as seen a tinder-box, and I do not know 
where I should go to buy one. But, in the work- 
ing of the household, the tinder-box was the one 
resource for getting a light. We boys, however, 
with the lavishness of boys, used to buy at the 
apothecary's phosphorus-boxes, which were then 
coming in. We had to pay twenty-five cents for 
one such box. These boxes were made in Ger- 
many; they were of red paper, little cylinders 
about four inches high and an inch in diameter. 
You could carry one, and were meant to carry it, 
in your breast pocket. In the bottom was a little 
bottle which contained asbestos soaked with sul- 
phuric acid, and in the top were about a hundred 
matches, made, I think, from chlorate of potash. 
One of these you put into the bottle, and pulled it 
out aflame. We never should have thought of 
taking one of these walks without a phosphorus- 
box. When we arrived at the woodland sought 
we invariably made a little fire. We never cooked 
anything that I remember, but this love of fire is 
one of the earlier barbarisms of the human race 
which dies out latest. I suppose if it had been 
the middle of the hottest day in August we should 
have made a fire. 

So soon as the morning session of school was 
over, in the summer or autumn months, if it were 



88 A New England Boyhood 

a half-holiday, we would start on one of these 
rambles. Sometimes, if the walk were not to a 
great distance, we invited, or permitted, the two 
girls to come with us. We had a tin box for 
plants, and always brought home what seemed 
new or pretty. On rare occasions, when we had 
made up a larger party, we took the " truck" with 
us, that we might treat any weaker member of the 
party to a ride. The truck was quite a fashion- 
able plaything at that time ; I do not see it much 
now, excepting in the hands of boys who have to 
use it for freight. But in those days boys rode 
on trucks a good deal, A truck was a pair of 
wooden wheels on a stout axle — generally not 
stout enough — with two thills, in which the boy 
harnessed himself by the simple process of taking 
hold of them with his hands. If he chose to be 
jaunty he had twine reins passed under his arms, 
that the person who sat on the seat of the truck 
might pretend to be driving. 

When, in 1833, the Worcester Railroad was 
opened, this walking gave way, for a family as 
largely interested in that railroad as we were, to 
excursions out of town to the point where the 
walk was to begin. The line to West Newton 
was opened to the public on the 7th of April, 
1833, but from the day when the Meteor, which 
was the first locomotive engine in New England, 
ran on her trial trip, we two boys were generally 
present at the railroad, on every half-holiday, to 
take our chances for a ride out upon one of the 



A New England Boyhood 89 

experimental trips. We knew the engine-drivers 
and the men who were not yet called conductors, 
and they knew us. My father was the president 
of the road, and we thought we did pretty much 
as we chose. The engine-drivers would let us 
ride with them on the engine, and I, for one, 
got my first lessons in the business of driving an 
engine on those excursions. But so soon as the 
road was open to passengers, these rides on the 
engine dropped off, perhaps were prohibited. 
Still we went to Newton as often as we could in 
the train, and afterwards to Needham. There 
were varied cars in those days, some of them 
open, like our open trolley-cars of to-day, and all 
of them entered from the side, as in England up 
to the present time. After this date our long 
walks out of town naturally ceased. Nothing 
was more common in our household than for the 
whole family to go out to Brighton or to Newton, 
and, with babies and all, to establish ourselves in 
some grove, where we spent the afternoon very 
much as God meant we should spend it, I sup- 
pose ; returning late in the evening with such 
spoils of wild flowers as the season permitted. 

More methodical excursions out of town took 
forms quite different from what they would take 
to-day. At our house the custom was to deride 
canals in proportion as we glorified railroads. All 
the same, I think in the summer of 1826 — still 
recollected as the hottest summer which has been 
known in this century in New England — it was 



90 A New England Boyhood 

announced one day that we were going to Chelms- 
ford, and that we were going by the canal. I have 
no recollection of the method by which we struck the 
Middlesex Canal; I suppose that we had to drive 
to East Cambridge and take the General Sullivan 
there. The Ge?ieral Siillivaji was what was known, 
I think, as a " packet-boat," which carried passen- 
gers daily from Boston to the Merrimac River, 
where the name "Lowell" had just then been 
given to a part of the township of Chelmsford. 
Mr. Samuel Batchelder, the distinguished engi- 
neer and manufacturer, to whom New England 
owes so much, was one of my father's most inti- 
mate friends. He was engaged in some of the first 
works at Lowell, and, by way of escape from the 
heat, father had arranged with him that the whole 
family should go down to the tavern at Chelms- 
ford and spend a few days. 

The present generation does not know it, but 
travelling on a canal is one of the most charming 
ways of travelling. We are all so crazy to go fifty 
miles an hour that we feel as if we had lost some- 
thing when we only go five miles an hour. All 
the same, to sit on the deck of a boat and see the 
country slide by you, without the slightest jar, with- 
out a cinder or a speck of dust, is one of the ex- 
quisite luxuries. The difficulty about speed is 
much reduced if you will remember, with Red 
Jacket, that " you have all the time there is." 
And I have found it not impossible to imagine 
that the distance over which I am going is ten 



A New England Boyhood 91 

times as great as in fact the statistical book would 
make it. Simply I think a man may get as much 
pleasure out of a journey to Lowell on a canal 
which is thirty miles long as he may out of a jour- 
ney of three hundred miles by rail between Albany 
and Buffalo, But this leads into metaphysical con- 
siderations which do not belong to the boyhood 
of New England. 

What did belong to it was a series of very early 
reminiscences which have clung to me when more 
important things have been forgotten. Fullum, of 
course, was of the party. He would spring from 
the deck of the General Sullivan upon the tow- 
path, and walk along collecting wild flowers, or 
perhaps even more active game. I have never for- 
gotten my terror lest Fullum should be left by the 
boat and should never return. When he did re- 
turn from one of these forays he brought with him 
for us children a very little toad, the first I had 
ever seen. My mother put him in her thimble he 
was so small. Not long after we heard that a deli- 
cate friend of hers had taken cold because she put 
on her thimble when it was damp. With a child's 
facility, I always associated the two thimbles with 
each other; and I think I may say I never see a 
little toad now, without imagining that he is carry- 
ing the seeds of catarrh or influenza to some deli- 
cate invalid. 

We stayed at the old tavern on the Merrimac, 
which, I suppose, was long ago pulled down. A 
story of that time tells how Mr. Isaac P. Davis, 



92 A New England Boyhood 

who was, I think, one of the proprietors of the locks 
and canals which made Lowell, went to this same 
hotel with a party, and inquired what they were 
to have for dinner. The keeper said that a good 
salmon had come up the river the night before, 
and he proposed to serve him — with which answer 
Mr. Davis was well pleased. Later in the morning 
he said he should like to see the salmon. But the 
man only expressed his amazement at such folly 
on the part of a Boston man. " You don't sup- 
pose I would take him out of the water, do you? 
He is in the water at the foot of the falls, and has 
been there since last night. When it is time to 
cook him, I shall go out and catch him." 

CHAPTER VI 

THE BOOKS IN THE ATTIC 

There were, in ordinary life, but six books in our 
attic. The house, below us, was full of books. 
Most of the books published in America were 
sent to my father for review in the Daz/f Adver- 
tiser. There were not as many books published 
in the world then as are published now. He also 
had a well-selected library of general literature. 
In this collection we roved at will, and when we 
were downstairs we read everything. 

But upstairs, in our attic, which was exclusively 
ours, we had but six books, or, for one period, 
seven. We did not select them. They selected 



A New England Boyhood 93 

themselves. They came there by the Divine Law 
of Selection. Indeed, there was not room for many 
more, certainly not time. 

For the attic was our workroom and playroom. 
No lights were permitted there. Practically, ex- 
cept on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, we 
were at school till dark. We never went to the 
attic on Sundays. So that, for all we had to do, 
there were only the two hours before dinner and 
after twelve, and the holy Wednesday and Satur- 
day afternoons — holy indeed, holidays in which 
was so much to be done ! You do not read many 
books when there is so little time. Think of it, 
only two half-holidays in a week, with so much 
to do! 

Do you wonder that we always disliked schools ! 
How horrible it was when once in two winters 
dancing-school came in and gobbled up Wednes- 
day and Saturday ! I have hated waltzing, from 
this association only, since those days. So much, 
to do, and to have to go to school Wednesday and 
Saturday afternoons ! 

Nor was there much room for books. I have 
lately revisited the attic, by the kindness of a 
gentleman who now occupies it as a part of his 
architect's office. It was fifteen feet square. It 
had then a sloping roof, and in a part of it one 
could not sit erect. What matter! — he could lie 
on his back, if he had to be there. In the higher 
part a pair of " parallel bars," for exercise, occu- 
pied a space eight feet by three. A Luthern 



94 A New England Boyhood 

(JLtizerne) window gave the most available space. 
If the printer will kindly make for me a little map 
— though I know he will hate to: have I not set 
type myself? — if he will kindly make me a little 
map from twelve em-dashes, I can explain how 
the floor of the attic divided itself. 

Fill 

LiU 

C. Hall of entrance. 

A. Luthern window. 

B. Under sloping roof. 

D. Parallel bars. 

Give about seven feet square for each of these im- 
agined subdivisions, and you will see that there 
was not much room for books in the attic. 

Nor was much room needed. There were but 
two of us — with occasional sisters. Ocasionally, 
also, we had John and Tom as guests, and welcome 
guests. I remember others as unwelcome. They 
did not fit in, and things had to be explained to 
them. Where there w^as so little time and so 
much to do, we wanted only those who could 
catch on, as John and Tom could. 

For we had perpetual motion to discover; we 
had to make locomotives from whalebone, ribbon 
rollers, and spools ; we had the dolls' school-room 
to furnish ; many magnetical discoveries to make 
with black sand — anticipating Tesla and Roent- 
gen; we had to illuminate the room with gas — 



A New England Boyhood 95 

made sometimes from turpentine, sometimes from 
" sea coal," as, like Shakespeare, we called it. 
We had to make Leyden jars and to communi- 
cate by telegraph, sometimes across the attic, 
sometimes with Point Alderton, ten miles away. 
We had plays to act, scenery to paint, parts to 
learn, to abridge, and to expand. We had two 
weekly newspapers to edit. We had many experi- 
ments to try on the strength of materials. We 
had to calculate the weight of air so that our bal- 
loons should be of the right size. We had naval 
battles to fight in floats on the floor. We had to 
paint portraits on the walls of our belles and their 
friends, and landscapes representing the places we 
visited in summer. There was no regular order 
assigned for these duties. But, like all duties, 
they were imperative. 

It will be seen that they required some books of 
reference. But, as has been said, there was not 
room for many. 

For these purposes — by the law of selection, 
as has been said also — six books had provided 
themselves. They were : 

1. Scott's minor poems — one thin volume in 
boards — of which the longest was "Search after 
Happiness." 

2. " Scientific Dialogues." 

3. " Harry and Lucy." 

4. [One hesitates before he writes so great a 
name.] "The Boy's Own Book." 

5. " The Treasury of Knowledge." 



96 A New England Boyhood 

6. That Central Book in Modern Literature, 
the book which explains all other books to those 
who cannot understand them without; the book 
which should have for itself a separate table, shelf, 
or case, 

" Robinson Crusoe." 

Sometimes there was a stray second volume of 
" Don Quixote." I do not know where it came 
from, or where it went to. But there it was — and 
it did its part, and did it well. 

It is of these six books, or, if you please, these 
six and a half, that you may now read a few words, 
if you choose. 

I. And, very briefly — as we say in sermons — 
of dear Sir Walter, save him God ! 

The Critics may pooh-pooh as they choose. 
He has been, is, and ever will be Poet of Boys — 
and that is what he would wish to be. 

Of course we knfew half "Marmion" by heart, 
and a quarter of " The Lady of the Lake." VVe 
capped verses a great deal with the girls, and in 
stress of E's we were glad to give 

Each had a boar-spear, tough and strong — 

it was good enough poetry for us. It told what 
was. But most boys had not read " The Sultan of 
Serendib" and " MacGregor's Lament," and knew 
" Pibroch of Donald Dhu " only because it was in 
" Mother Goose." Why? Heaven only knows ! 

I have never seen another copy of that Phila- 
delphia edition of those Poems. Ours was yellow, 



A New England Boyhood 97 

with many stains on the covers from wet retorts 
which had been set on it when they were cooHng. 
But though it was dirty, it was good. And we 
did not have our books for their covers. Glory 
and honor and immortaHty be to dear Sir Walter ! 

2. " Scientific Dialogues " had been used in the 
High School. It had been extolled in " Harry 
and Lucy." Even then we knew that half of it 
was wrong. Now I suppose that they have proved 
that half the other half is wrong. 

But certain Eternal Truths, made out by Isaac 
Newton and others, will always prove true. And 
these were in Joyce's " Scientific Dialogues " — 
are now, if a copy lingers in any archaeological 
museum. 

And a few Eternal Truths are excellent for boy 
or man to possess and build upon. 

3. " Harry and Lucy." Not the first part. 
That is only for children. The last three volumes, 
published in 1825 for the first time. The volumes 
which have JOY, JOY, JOY in them, and the tragic 
narrative of Harry's burn. 

4. " The Treasury of Knowledge " was a very 
curious collection, published by Connor & Cook 
in New York, in the infancy of American publica- 
tion. I never saw the first volume till I picked it 
up a few years ago in a second-hand book-store. 
But the second volume contained a Dictionary of 
Quotations, Sir Richard Phillips's " Million of 
Facts," and Knapp's "American Biography" — 
three wholly different books bound in one volume. 

7 



98 A New England Boyhood 

It was the " Million of Facts " which we loved 
most. Into the "Million of Facts" somebody, I 
know not who, had crowded a brief and inaccurate 
sketch of American History, and a history of 
American Literature. For these we did not care ; 
but the hocus-pocus of what were called " facts," 
on what was called Opticks with a k, and Chymis- 
try with ajj/; on the Vegetable Kingdom and the 
Animal Kingdom ; on Mathematicks and Physicks, 
both with yl''s ; on Astronomy and Atmospheric 
Phenomena ; on Acousticks and Physical Geogra- 
phy; in fact, on everything in the heavens above, 
and the earth beneath, and the waters under the 
earth — this "million of facts" found their fit 
places in youthful minds. 

Truth is truth, and truth knows truth ; so that 
fully nineteen-twentieths of these facts, being in- 
accurate lies of the lowest order, sank to their 
places. Gradually notes in pencil, by different 
authors, got themselves written in above and 
below, on the right hand and on the left hand. 
The inconsistencies of the book itself were thus 
explained, as when on one page the w^eight of air 
was represented as a thousand times as much as 
on another page. But, take it for all in all, it was 
an excellent thing that we had this brief book of 
reference, which would answer our questions, or 
would try to answer them in its poor dumb way, 
without our having to go downstairs to bother 
our mother or Fullum. My heart warmed to 
Jacob Abbott when I learned that his children 



A New England Boyhood 99 

had a cyclopaedia of their own. The existence of 
that cyclopsedia, which I dare say had its demerits, 
accounts for the Abbott family of this generation, 
and for much of the generation bred by him and 
them. 

5. Now let me speak, with bated breath, of the 
dear " Boy's Own Book," If I had seen Nansen 
before he started, I would have asked him to look 
at the North Pole to see if there were a copy there, 
for I cannot find a copy anywhere now in the 
world. There is another book with the same 
name, but it is not the dear " Boy's Own Book." 
The accurate Allibone omits it from his catalogue ; 
it is always " out " when I go for it to the Public 
Library. My copy, I suppose, has long since fed 
the eagles and the condors, and apparently nothing 
is left of it but these loving impressions which it 
has made on grateful memory. Who made the 
" Boy's Own Book " I do not know, and I wish I 
did ; I would write his grandson the most grateful 
letter that he has ever received. Some poor book- 
hack, I suppose, in London, was hired by some 
unsentimental publisher, who gave to him this 
admirable name which sombody else had invented, 
and bade him make this cyclopaedia, as it was 
called, of all knowledge for boys. 

So, somewhat in the inaccurate style, let me 

F confess, of dear Sir Richard Phillips's "Million of 

J Facts," the "Boy's Ov/n Book" told us what boys 

should know. It told about checkers and chess 

and magic lanterns. It told about fencing and 



100 A New England Boyhood 

swimming and riding and walking. It told about 
making carriages that would run up hill or down 
hill, as they were wanted to. It had its chapters 
on chemistry, as the other book had ; and the 
chemistry was such as to make the technological 
schools of to-day go crazy ! But we did not care 
whether it spoke of the oil of vitriol or of sulphuric 
acid; under one name as under the other the 
magic liquid would make holes in our clothes, or 
stain Sir Walter Scott ! 

This unknown hack, as I irreverently call him, 
had put at the head of the respective chapters 
some charming verses. None of these verses are 
now to be found in Bartlett, I do not know why. 
I shall say to Mr. Bartlett, the first time I see him, 
that he would have been well employed if he had 
hunted them all to their origin. 

To teach his grandson draughts, then, 

His leisure he 'd employ, 
Until at last the old man 

Is beaten by the boy. 

This with a charming little drawing — I wonder if 
George Cruikshank himself did not make it — of 
the boy pointing scorn in the grandfather's face. 
Then these wonderful lines: 

Somebody and Somebody, Effingham and Doyle, 
In their own sphere by Biddle were outdone. 
They all with pen or pencil solved their problem, 
He with no aid but wondrous memory. 
They in maturer years acquired their fame, 
He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. 



A New England Boyhood loi 

Bidder, be it known to this generation, was an 
eminent boy calculator of the beginning of the 
century. He appears, alas ! in no biographical 
dictionary that I can put my hand upon. Who 
Effingham and Doyle were I know no more than 
this reader, nor do I care, nor who were the Some- 
bodies, whose names I have forgotten. The math- 
ematical problems which this chapter started us 
upon, and the encouragement which it gave to 
youngsters — as, indeed, the whole book did — 
all this is as fresh now as it was then. It was 
whispered that in the English edition there were 
chapters which were left out in the American 
edition ; and one day Edward Webster brought 
round the English edition, to our astonishment. 
But little did we heed this ; there was more in the 
American edition than we could digest with our 
limited resources. We imagined ourselves riding 
on those matchless chargers. We tried the swim- 
ming experiments at Braman's Baths or whenever 
we were in the country. In short, if we were not 
Admirable Crichtons, all of us, it was not because 
the Boy's Own Book did not show us how. Let 
me hope that the boys of to-day have books half 
as good ; I am sure that they have none better. 

6. As for Robinson Crusoe, this writer has de- 
voted many separate articles to explain to an un- 
grateful world how much it owes, has owed, and 
will owe to that central book of the literature of 
England. There is a new Life of Daniel Defoe 
every five years, of which the first object is to 



I02 A New England Boyhood 

show that the last Life is all wrong. You might 
say that one school of English critics think that 
Defoe was either a fool, a liar, or a knave, while 
the other school thinks that England owes to him 
more than she does to any other man. But both 
schools have to admit that he wrote Robinson 
Crusoe. I believe that Robinson Crusoe is the 
only book of which, in the great libraries, they do 
not attempt to give a history of the editions. 
There are too many editions for that. Every 
publisher in England or America who receives 
orders from retail dealers finds it worth his while 
to have his own plates of Robinson Crusoe, from 
which to execute his own daily orders, without send- 
ing to any other manufacturer for the book. Some 
people would think it dangerous to ask whether 
more copies have been printed of the English 
Robinson Crusoe or of the English Bible. No- 
body need be alarmed, for there is not one word 
in Robinson Crusoe but is pure and strong, and 
alive with that Life which it is the best business of 
the Bible to quicken. It turns out, as I send 
this page to press, that the book has its value in 
the Venezuelan Controversy. 

Defoe himself said that Robinson Crusoe was 
but a parable relating the changes of his own 
moral and spiritual growth. But no one has 
been able to work this out ; indeed, I do not 
think the modern biographers love their hero 
enough to try to. 

It is very curious that Robinson Crusoe lands 



A New England Boyhood 103 

upon his island at the very moment when the Eng- 
lish Commonwealth expires ; and that he returns 
to England, after his stay of nearly a year in Lisbon, 
the week before William III.'s Convention Parlia- 
ment assembled. This is a very remarkable coin- 
cidence. It seems to imply that Defoe meant to 
take Crusoe away from England for all the years 
when England was under the rule of Monk or of 
the Stuarts. 

A friend to whom I read these lines says, " Rob- 
inson is a man without a country, not only because 
he went back on his country, but because his 
country went back on him." 

7. As for the half-book, the second volume of 
" Don Quixote," I will not trust myself to say any- 
thing now. Mr. Sedgwick, in his charming article 
published in the Atlantic has shown, better 
than I could show, the value of that great romance 
in the forming of the character of boys. I will 
not add a word to his admirable criticism. 

CHAPTER VII 

SOCIAL RELATIONS 

I AM painfully aware that, to the diligent reader of 
the last two parts of this historical study, it may 
seem as if the boys described were a sort of Rob- 
inson Crusoe and man Friday who lived alone on 
their happy island. I feel as if I had spoken as 
though there were an occasional invasion of sav- 



I ©4 A New England Boyhood 

ages or Spaniards, but that practically we had little 
to do with the outside world. This is by no means 
true, and I will now try to give some idea of the 
social conditions which surrounded boyhood in 
Boston in the years between 1826 and 1837. For 
we were " in the swim," as the current expression 
puts it, and no countenance would have been given 
to us, either in any shyness or for any arrogance 
which kept us out of it. 

I have already said that, while on the most cor- 
dial terms with our school companions, it seemed 
as if we left them in another world as soon as 
school was over. As I have said, I think the 
reason was that most of the fathers of the other 
boys were in mercantile pursuits, and the boys' 
business, therefore, called them quite regularly to 
the wharves to inspect the large foreign trade of 
Boston. As it happened, our father was in other 
affairs, and, as naturally, these attracted us. 

In an old New England family, church-going, of 
course, was an element which had a great deal to 
do with social life. I was carried to " meeting " on 
the fourth Sunday after I was born, and was chris- 
tened at the same time with two or three other 
children. I afterwards knew their names. They 
were in fLimilies with whom we were well ac- 
quainted, and to this hour that mystic tie seems 
to form a relationship between me and them and 
their children. I have to this moment a little bit 
of yellow paper which is, I fancy, the first docu- 
ment but one among the memoirs which form my 



A New England Boyhood 105 

biography. It is the bill of the " stable man " who 
sent his carriage on this occasion. " For canying 
three to meeting, sixty cents." My poor nine or 
ten pounds of avoirdupois went as nothing to the 
hack-driver, and no estimate is made of the cost to 
him or to the community of the carrying to " meet- 
ing" of the person who was, as I must still say, the 
most important individual in the transaction. 

In those days children were taken to church for 
regular attendance very early. I do not see any 
children in my own church who are as young as 
those who went or were taken then. On our 
annual visits to VVesthampton we were always 
interested because the young mothers carried 
their babies to *' meeting," at all ages. They did 
not like, I suppose, to stay at home when all the 
men " went to meeting," and accordingly they went 
with the children. If a baby cried the mother got 
up, carried it out, and sat on the steps of the meet- 
ing-house until the ebullition of feeling was over, 
when she returned. But this was rather edifying 
as an interesting curiosity to us Boston children. 
No babies were carried to Brattle Street Church 
except for baptism; but as soon as the children 
could walk, and be relied upon not to cry, I should 
think the custom began. Such reliance was some- 
times misplaced. I am so unfortunate that I do 
not remember ever hearing Dr. Channing preach; 
but it is among the disgraceful records of my life 
that once, when my mother thought she would 
hear him, and, because Brattle Street Church was 



io6 A New England Boyhood 

being painted, went to Federal Street, she took 
me with her. She sat with friends, far forward in 
the broad aisle, and I, dissatisfied with the interior 
arrangements of the church, I suppose — probably- 
dissatisfied because I was not where I was used to 
be on Sunday — wept with such loud acclaim that 
in the middle of the service she was obliged to 
rise and take me out of the church. I think it 
was the last experiment of the sort that she tried. 
In fact, we were very loyal to our church. I think 
all people were loyal to the churches they went to. 
And to such unfortunate loyalty I owe it that, while 
I knew Dr. Channing personally, and he was very- 
kind to me as a boy, I never had the pleasure of 
hearing him preach, excepting on the occasion 
named, although I was twenty years old when he 
died. I have, more than once, lieard him speak, 
but never from the pulpit. 

We " went to meeting" morning and afternoon 
always, and so, I am apt to think, did all respect- 
able people ; certainly in the earlier part of those 
years. I know that I never observed any distinc- 
tion between the size of the congregation in the 
afternoon and that of the morning. I know that 
any person who had been seen driving out of town 
on Sunday, either in the morning or in the after- 
noon, would have lost credit in the community. 
Frequently Mr. Palfrey, the minister, would say, 
at the end of the morning's sermon, " I shall con- 
tinue this subject in the afternoon." He did so 
with the perfect understanding that he would have 



A New England Boyhood 107 

the same hearers. I wonder, in passing, whether 
that phrase "my hearers" is as familiar to young 
people now as it was then. It was a bit of pulpit 
slang, such as one never hears in a lecture-room 
or in a political meeting. The people, instead of 
being addressed as " you " or as " friends," or as 
" members of the Church of Christ," were spoken to 
as " hearers." I doubt if I ever hear that word now 
without giving it a certain ecclesiastical connection. 
It was a wonder to me then, and has been ever 
since, why the hour and a quarter spent in " meet- 
ing " of a Sunday morning seemed as long as the 
four hours spent in school every other morning. 
I was early aware of the curiously interesting fact, 
which nobody has ever explained to me, that the 
afternoon service was ten minutes shorter than the 
morning service ; but why that hour and five min- 
utes should seem as long as the three hours spent 
in school of an afternoon I have never known, and 
do not know now. Besides these two services, we 
had the Sunday-school. It seems to me it was 
always after the afternoon service ; I know it was 
in the earlier days. A Sunday-school then was a 
very different thing from what it is now. Then 
you were expected to learn something, and you 
did. For my own part, I have often said, and I 
think it is true, that fully one-half of the import- 
ant information which I now have with regard to 
the Scriptural history of mankind — with regard 
to the history of the Jews, for instance, or the 
travels of Paul right and left, or anything else 



io8 A New England Boyhood 

which can be called the intellectual side of the 
Bible — was acquired in Brattle Street Sunday- 
school before I was thirteen years old. We had 
little books which contained facts on these subjects. 
We had to study these books as we did any other 
school-books, and we recited from them as we re- 
cited any other lesson, I do not think there was 
much said or thought about making Sunday-school 
agreeable to the children. We were told to go, 
and we went ; we were told to learn a lesson, and we 
learned it. As I observe Sunday-schools now, this 
has been driven out, and driven out, I believe, by the 
pressure of the week-day school system — a pressure 
which I am always fighting against in every quar- 
ter without any success. For myself, I liked to go 
where my brother and sisters went. They went 
to the Sunday-school, so I expressed a wish to go. 
Pupils were received there then, on the 1st of 
January, and on the first Sunday of the year 1827 
I presented myself with the rest. But it proved 
that the rule of the school was that no one should 
be admitted before he was six. I suppose they did 
not want children who could not read. I could 
read as I have said, as well as I can now, and I was 
disgusted, therefore, when I was rejected on exam- 
ination. I rather think I was the only child in New 
England who was ever told that he must not go to 
Sunday-school, But I was sent away on the ground 
that I was not six years old. I went home with the 
others, saying, " It is a pretty way to hear a fellow 
say his catechism by asking him, ' How old are 



A New England Boyhood 109 

you? * How old are you ? ' ' How old are you?' " 
And I was not permitted to go for the next year. 
I had already taken the first steps in the catechism. 
I had learned in words what I probably knew al- 
ready — all, indeed, that is very important to learn 
in the business of theology. 

Such was going to meeting on Sunday. I sup- 
pose the sons of Episcopalian families spoke of 
" going to church," but we did not in my earlier 
childhood. I make the note here, however, for the 
benefit of "Notes and Queries," that, in Boston, 
the meeting-houses were always called churches 
from the very beginning. I think they were not 
in other parts of Massachusetts. In Hales's map 
of this neighborhood, of the date of 1826, you will 
see " Rev. Mr. Gray's M. H.," " Rev. Mr. Gile's M. 
H.," meaning "meeting-house" in each instance. 

Of week-day exercises connected with churches 
Boston knew almost nothing, not even in Evangel- 
ical circles. The fact was known that there was 
a chandelier in the Old South Church, but I do 
not think the chandelier was often lighted. When 
Park Street Church was built, as a sort of banner 
of a stricter dispensation for latitudinarian Boston, 
it had arrangements for lighting the church for 
an evening service. But this was all a heresy to 
the old Boston Puritan, whether he were Evangel- 
ical or Unitarian. 

For the original theory of the Puritans is that 
the family is the church, and that each family is a 
church. The father of each family is a priest, 



I lo A New England Boyhood 

and is competent to carry on worship. Accord- 
ingly he does carry on worship in the morning 
and in the evening; and any proposal for an even- 
ing service anywhere else was regarded by the old 
Puritans as being, to a certain extent, an innova- 
tion, because it broke up that family worship 
which was so essential in their plan. I think that 
in every family of which I had any acquaintance 
the forms of family worship were maintained in 
this earlier period ; every morning certainly, and 
probably every evening. When, therefore, the 
religion of Connecticut was introduced into Boston 
by the building of Park Street Church, and by 
the arrival of my children's great-grandfather, 
Lyman Beecher, and the custom of an occasional 
evening service on Sunday or on a week-day came 
with it, it was considered as an entire innovation 
by old-fashioned Boston. It was quite as much 
an innovation as calling an Episcopal minister a 
"rector" is now to old-fashioned Episcopalians, or 
as having lighted candles in the daytime would be 
at Trinity. To the last moment of its conscious 
existence the West Church was never arranged for 
evening service ; and at this moment you will find, 
in old Boston families, the habit of going to visit 
one another on Sunday evening, but not of going 
to church. Where people go to church steadily on 
Sunday evening you may generally guess that they 
are not of old Boston or Essex County blood. 

In the interior of the State, as at my grand- 
father's, for example, the observance of " the Sab- 



A New England Boyhood 1 1 1 

bath " stopped at sunset. For instance, we 
watched at his house for the sun to go down on 
Sunday afternoon, and then brought out our Httle 
cannons and fired a feu dc joic in honor of its 
departure. We then played blindman's-buff all 
Sunday evening, and this in the parsonage of a 
stiff Calvinistic minister. No such excesses as this 
would have been permitted in Boston. But grad- 
ually Sunday evening concerts came in, if only 
they were religious concerts ; and the Handel and 
Haydn Society, I think, would hardly have been 
in existence now but for the midway opportunity 
which Sunday evening gave for their perform- 
ances. The theatres, on the other hand, were 
compelled to be closed on Saturday evening and on 
Sunday, until a period later than that I am describ- 
ing, when some of the more enterprising managers 
defied the State and the city, and our statutes were 
changed so that performances on Saturday evening 
were possible. After they had gained the point as 
a matter of right I think they generally found it 
more convenient to have the performances of Sat- 
urday in the afternoon. Our present statute, which 
defines the Lord's Day as from midnight to mid- 
night, is as late as 1844. Before that time there 
were certain restrictions on Saturday evening, such 
as the theatrical licenses indicated. 

Perhaps the great central day which gave dis- 
tinction and hope to the duty of going to meeting 
was the proclamation of Thanksgiving, Let me 
describe a scene in Brattle Street Meeting-House. 



112 A New England Boyhood 

The time is the middle of November, on a Sun- 
day morning. A boy of four years old, who has 
the fortunate privilege of sitting on the cross-seat 
of the pew, is the person who describes, after 
sixty-six years, what he remembers. Be it under- 
stood by architectural readers that Brattle Street 
Meeting-House was a fine old church in Boston, 
built after the best traditions of Wren's churches 
in London. It has been vvell said that in the 
social life of London in the days of Wren there 
were reasons for the high walls, as they might be 
be called, which in those churches concealed the 
worshippers in one pew from those in the next. 
Whatever was the reason, such high pew walls were 
the effect. The little boy, whose self and suc- 
cessor is now trying to reproduce him, could sleep, 
if he chose, extended on the cross-seat with his 
head in his mother's lap, while she listened to the 
minister. I will not say that on this particular 
day, he, or I, had been asleep. What is impor- 
tant to the present business is that she whispers to 
him that he had better listen now, for the minister 
is going to read the proclamation. The boy stands 
up on his seat, and with that delight with which 
even conservative childhood sees any custom 
defied watches with rapture Mr. Palfrey unfolding 
the large paper sheet, which might have been a 
large newspaper, and sees the sheet cover even 
the pulpit Bible. 

Mr. Palfrey is a young man of thirty or there- 
abouts, who is afterwards to be the distinguished 



A New England Boyhood 1 1 3 

Dr. Palfrey, a leader of the Anti-Slavery opinion 
of Massachusetts. He reads the Governor's pro- 
clamation with sense and feeling, so that even a 
child follows along, about the taking care of the 
poor, the happiness of home, but specially about 
the success of the fisheries. It is only in the latest 
times that any Massachusetts Governor is so dis- 
loyal to that ocean from whose breasts she has 
drawn her life that he fails to mention The Fish- 
eries in his proclamation. But home, poor people, 
fisheries, and all sink into their own insignificance 
when with resonant voice the minister ends — with 
the grand words : 

Given in the Council Chamber at Boston, in the year of 
our Lord, 1826, and of the Independence of the United 
States the fiftieth. 

Levi Lincoln, Governor. 

This fine relationship between " Thanksgiving 
Day " and " Independence Day," of which the 
glories, six months ago, are a certain hazy dream, 
is not lost upon the child. And then follow the 
words, most grand in all rituals: 

By his Excellency the Governor, with the advice and con- 
sent of the Council. 

Edward D. Bangs, Secretary. 

GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH OF 
MASSACHUSETTS! 

That words so inspiring, pronounced with such a 
clarion voice, should be uttered in a church on 
Sunday — this was indeed something to fill high 



114 -^ New England Boyhood 

the cup of wild, intoxicating joy. That Edward 
D. Bangs, the secretary, should be sitting himself, 
watching, as it were, his own petard, on the other 
side of the aisle, with his finger resting on his right 
ear, in a peculiar manner such as was unknown to 
others — he clad in a brown coat with a velvet 
collar — that he should see and hear all this 
unmoved — this added to the grandeur and solem- 
nity and high dignity of the whole. A certain 
emphasis on the D added to the effect. The 
minister said that, in accordance with the instruc- 
tions of the Executive, the church would be open 
on Thanksgiving Day, and that, before that day — 
namely, on the next Sunday — a contribution 
would be taken for the poor. The boy asked his 
mother if he might bring some money — and was 
told that he should have a fo'pence for the 
occasion. " Fo'pence " in the language of the 
time meant fourpence-halfpenny of the currency 
of New England. But New England, though she 
coined threepences with her own pine-tree, never 
coined fourpence-ha'penny pieces. She used in- 
stead the half-real of the Spanish coinage. The 
boy was to put in the box, and did put in for many 
years at Thanksgiving, one of these coins, small to 
kings, but almost the largest known in familiar 
use to children. 

Passing by the contribution, and the vague 
ideas which the children had of the immense re- 
sults to be obtained by the distribution of their 
wealth among the poor, I will come directly to 



A New England Boyhood 1 1 ^ 

Thanksgiving Day itself. Had we children been 
asked what we expected on Thanksgiving Day wc 
should have clapped our hands and said that we 
expected a good dinner. As we had a good 
dinner every day of our lives this answer shows 
simply that children respect symbols and types. 
And indeed there were certain peculiarities in the 
Thanksgiving dinner which there were not on 
common days. For instance, there was always a 
great deal of talk about the Marlborough pies or 
the Marlborough pudding. To this hour, in any 
old and well-regulated family in New England, you 
will find there is a traditional method of making 
the Marlborough pie, which is a sort of lemon pie, 
and each good housekeeper thinks that her grand- 
mother left a better receipt for Marlborough pie 
than anybody else did. We had Marlborough pies 
at other times, but we were sure to have them on 
Thanksgiving Day; and it ought to be said that 
there was no other day on which we had four kinds 
of pies on the table and plum pudding beside, not 
to say chicken pie. In those early days ice 
creams or sherbets or any other kickshaws of that 
variety would have been spurned from a Thanks- 
giving dinner. 

Every human being went to "meeting" on the 
morning of Thanksgiving Day, the boy of four 
years included. At that age he did not know 
that the sermon was, or might be, political. Still 
an attentive ear might catch words from the 
pulpit which would not have been heard on Sun- 



1 16 A New England Boyhood 

day. It was when all parties came home from 
" meeting " that the real festival began. Not but 
what frequent visits to the kitchen the day before 
had familiarized even Young Boston with the 
gigantic scale on which things were conducted. 
For it was the business of the kitchen, not simply 
to supply the feast in that house but the other 
feasts in the houses of feudal dependents of differ- 
ent colors, who would render themselves for their 
pies and their chickens. 

The hours absolutely without parallel in the 
year were the two hours between twelve and two. 
We were in our best clothes and it was Thanks- 
giving Day. We therefore did not do what we 
should have done on other days, and we were the 
least bit bored by the change. On other days we 
should have gone and coasted had the snow 
fallen; or we should have gone into the "garret" 
and fought an imaginary battle of Salamis on the 
floats. But this was Thanksgiving Day, and we 
therefore went into the best parlor, not very often 
opened, and entertained ourselves, or entertained 
each other, by looking at picture-books which we 
could not always see. The Hogarths were out, 
the illustrated books of travel, the handsome 
annuals which were rather too fine for our hands 
at other periods. We were in the position of the 
boy and girl invited to a party where they know 
nobody, standing in a corner and pretending to be 
interested by photographs. But before a great 
while the cousins would begin to arrive, and then 



A New England Boyhood 1 1 7 

all would be well. The cousins also were in their 
best clothes, to which we were not accustomed. 
But if we could show them the Hogarths, or they 
could tell us some experience of theirs in private 
theatricals, then the joys of society began. And 
at two the party, larger than we ever saw it at 
any other time, went into the back parlor, where 
the large table was set. Observe that this large 
table never appeared, unless the " club " met with 
my father, except on Thanksgiving Day. Christ- 
mas Day, as a holiday of this sort, was absolutely 
unknown in this Puritan family. 

There would be a side-table for the children at 
which the oldest cousin in a manner presided, with 
his very funny stories, with his very exciting lore 
about the new life on which he was entering, 
either in the first class at the Latin School or 
possibly after he had left the Latin School. 
Occasionally the revelry at the side-table became 
so loud that it had to be suppressed by a word 
from the elders. At the elders' table great talk 
about genealogy : whether Gib Atkins did or did 
not leave a particular bit of land to certain 
successors who now own it ; whether the Picos 
and the Robbs were on good terms after the 
marriage of one of them to an Everett. I will say, 
in passing, that, as we grew older, we children had 
the wit to introduce these subjects for the purpose 
of seeing the mad rage with which different aged 
cousins advanced to the attack, as a bull might to 
a red flag. 



1 1 8 A New England Boyhood 

It may readily be imagined that, with twenty or 
thirty guests and the innumerable courses, the 
company, who were indeed in no haste, sat a good 
while at the table. This was one of the marvels 
to us children, that it was possible to be at dinner 
two hours. There was no desire to slip down 
from the chair and go off to play. There was no 
soup dreamed of, and I think, to this day, that 
there never should be any at a Thanksgiving 
dinner. Neither did any fish follow where no 
soup led the way. You began with your chicken 
pie and your roast turkey. You ate as much as 
you could, and you then ate what you could of 
mince pie, squash pie, Marlborough pie, cranberry 
tart, and plum pudding. Then you went to work 
on the fruits as you could. Here, in parenthesis, 
I will say to young Americans that the use of 
dried fruits at the table was much more frequent 
in those days than in these. Dates, prunes, 
raisins, figs, and nuts held a much more prominent 
place in a handsome dessert than they do now. 
Recollect that oranges were all brought from the 
West Indies or from the Mediterranean in sailing 
vessels, and were by no means served in the profu- 
sion with which they are served now. It has not 
much to do with a Thanksgiving dinner, but bana- 
nas as I have said above, somewhere, were wholly 
unknown. 

With such devices the children at the side-table 
and the elders at the large table whiled away the 
time till it was quite dark, and it might well be 



A New England Boyhood 1 1 9 

that the lamps were lighted. Observe, gas was 
wholly unknown in private residences. And when 
at last the last philopoena had been given between 
two of the children, or the last " roast turkey " had 
been broken out of an English walnut and saved 
as a curiosity, all parties slid from their chairs, or 
rose up from them, as the length of their legs 
might be, and adjourned to the large parlor again. 
At the bottom of my heart I think that here 
came a period in which the elders quailed. I 
think it was rather hard for them to maintain the 
conversation about genealogy and lost inheri- 
tances. But we children nev^er quailed. We either 
returned to the picture-books or we sat in the 
corner and told stories, or possibly the expert 
cousins, who were skilled in the fine arts, drew 
pictures for us. I have not the slightest recollec- 
tion, either at that first Thanksgiving or on any 
subsequent Thanksgiving of childhood, of any 
moment of tediousness or gloom, such as I have 
since found to hang over even the bravest in the 
midst of a high festivity. Before long we would 
be in the corner playing commerce, or old maid, 
or possibly "slap everlasting"; or the Game of 
Human Life would be produced, with the teeto- 
tum, and one would find himself in the stocks, or 
in a gambling-room, or in prison perhaps, or hap- 
pily, at the age of sixty-three years, in glory. 
Memorandum: It is seven years since I passed 
that grand climacteric of 7 x 9 with which the tee- 
totum games ended, and I am not in glory yet, 



I20 A New England Boyhood 

unless the beauty of an October day, when leaves 
of gold shine out between me and the blue heav- 
ens may be considered glory enough for one who 
believes that this world was made by a good God. 
There was nothing to prevent blind-man's-buff, 
but that the elders had to have their share of the 
room. In later days charades came in, and it is 
now forty years since I have assisted at a Thanks- 
giving, without annually acting the part of Young 
Lochinvar, or Lord Ullin, or of the " Captain bold 
of Halifax." But this I did not do when I was 
four years old. Of those first Thanksgiving Days 
my memories are simply of undisguised delight. 
I wonder now that I did not die the day after the 
first of them from having eaten five times as much 
as I should have done. But there seems to be a 
good Providence which watches over boys and 
girls, as over idiots and drunken people. This is 
sure, that I have survived to tell the story. 

Social existence in all forms of civilization 
requires a certain knowledge of dancing; and in 
conventional civilization this dancing is, alas, not 
left to the spontaneous joy of children, but, will- 
ingly or unwillingly, they have to be taught to 
dance. This fell upon us as upon other children, 
and to the very end of his life Mr. Lorenzo Papanti, 
cordial, graceful, and dignified old man, remem- 
bered kindly that I was one of the first four pupils 
whom he had in Boston. He has become so far 
an historical character to many of the best in 



A New England Boyhood i 2 1 

Boston that the reader will excuse me if I give a 
few words to his dancing-school. It was in Mont- 
gomery Place, now Bosworth Street; I think in the 
very house which was removed to open the pas- 
sage through to what we called Cooke's Court, and 
what the present generation calls Chapman Place. 
It was in the third story of that house, where a 
partition had been cut away to make a hall large 
enough for a dancing-school. The papering at 
one end still differed from the papering at the 
other. To this hall of Terpsichore I repaired with 
three others, and we were the only pupils on the 
first Thursday afternoon of our attendance. On 
the next Saturday there arrived more, one of them 
one of my brothers in baptism, of whom I have 
already spoken ; and from that time the school in- 
creased, and, as one is glad to say, maintains at this 
moment, under the direction of another genera- 
tion, the high and well-deserved regard and esteem 
of everybody in Boston who knows anything about 
it. This hall was near our house, so that we could 
always go on foot. But there was a rather tragic 
story in the family of the school of M. Labasse, to 
which my older brother and sister went, which was 
so far away that they had to be sent in a carriage. 
Unfortunately in the jolting of the carriage they 
were shaken off the seats, and they were so small 
that they could not climb up on them again before 
they arrived at their destination. Thus early was 
the art of graceful movement impressed upon them. 
For me, dancing-school shared in the dislike 



122 A New England Boyhood 

with which I regarded all other schools. Dear 
Mrs. Papanti — I remember her with gratitude to 
this moment — did her best for me, but never was 
a pupil less likely to add to the reputation of an 
institution. The school was afterwards removed 
to Bulfinch Place, where the Papantis had an ele- 
gant house. I was at that time bribed to attend 
by being told I might take a book with me to 
read. One afternoon, when the boys were carry- 
ing on awfully, dear Mrs. Papanti bore down upon 
us, and said, " Why is it that Master Hale is so 
quiet, while Master Champernoon behaves so 
badly?" and looked over my shoulder, to see that 
I was reading "Guy Mannering." "Ah!" she 
cried, " I will give Master Champernoon a set 
of the Waverley novels if he will behave as 
well as Master Hale does ! " But alas, Master 
Champernoon was one of the boys who enjoyed 
dancing, and wanted to dance, and had unwar- 
ranted arrangements with the girls with regard to 
partners, and so on, while Master Hale detested 
the whole thing. Good soul, she did her best in 
dragging me about, as a favorite pupil, in the 
waltz ; but my poor head swam, and I think 
my partners, from that day to this, have gener- 
ally preferred to ** stand through a waltz," when 
they have found the alternative was sharing it 
with me. 

All this led, of course, to little evening parties 
of the boys and girls, just as it does now. The 
boys would stand at the foot of the stairs and in 



A New England Boyhood 123 

the entries, just as they do now, and maiden aunts 
would make incursions upon them to tell them 
that they must take partners, just as they do now. 
They took these partners, and then retired from 
the field to similar clusters, to be broken up again, 
just as they do now. 

I have tried to describe in my story " East and 
West" the way in which refreshments were gener- 
ally served at evening parties, unless these were 
on the grandest scale. There would frequently 
be such a party without a proper supper-table. I 
believe this was largely due to the fact that, in 
very few houses in Boston then, was there a 
special dining-room. People dined in their back 
parlors, and when the house was given up to 
dancing the back parlor was not available as a 
supper-room. At the simpler parties to which 
boys and girls went, in place of the supper a 
little procession of servants brought in large trays 
with cake of different kinds, even with ice cream, 
perhaps with jelly or blanc mange, with wine or 
lemonade ; and these processions recurred half a 
dozen times in the course of the evening. 

Another function which brought young people 
together, and brought them together with older 
people, was the arrangement for evening lectures. 
These were much more familiar and homelike than 
the lectures of to-day, to which we go hardly with 
any idea of social enjoyment. But, as I have 
intimated, the "march of intellect" had begun. 
One feature of the march of intellect was the in- 



I 24 A New England Boyhood 

troduction of lectures for people who wanted to 
learn something. They were exactly what is 
called the university extension system to-day, 
which I observe, however, is spoken of every- 
where as if it were an entirely new invention, A 
lecture course is now undertaken by a director, 
or cjitrepreneiir, who means to provide entertain- 
ment for the people. He does not pretend to 
teach the people ; he proposes to entertain them. 
Therefore, if his course consists of eight lectures, 
he provides eight different entertaining speakers ; 
and this makes almost a class of men, each of 
whom has a few entertaining addresses prepared 
with this definite purpose. But in the earlier 
days of what we called the lecture system, or 
the lyceum, a body of public-spirited men, who 
really wanted to improve the education of the 
community, banded themselves together into a 
society for that purpose. This society, among 
other instrumentalities, established courses of 
lectures, generally in the winter, for the instruc- 
tion of the people. 

In Boston such lectures had been heralded by 
courses arranged by individuals. Dr. Jacob Bige- 
low had courses on botany; Henry Ware gave 
a course of very popular lectures on Palestine; 
Edward Everett delivered lectures on Greek an- 
tiquities; and there were other similar courses, 
just as there might be now, if anybody would 
attend them. The success of these courses 
showed that a systematic arrangement might be 



A New England Boyhood 125 

made for courses of popular lectures in the even- 
ings, and such were, in fact, carried on by dif- 
ferent societies for a period of years. They 
culminated in the great success which Mr. John 
Lowell, Jr. achieved, in the establishment of the 
Lowell Institute; and I suppose it was this foun- 
dation which broke down at once all weaker 
foundations with the same purpose. It does its 
work so well that nobody in Boston need have 
any tears for them. I remember the Society for 
the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, the Mercan- 
tile Library Association, the Mechanics' Appren- 
tices' Association, the Natural History Society, 
and the Historical Society, as maintaining such 
courses of lectures as I describe. There would 
be from ten to fifteen lectures in a course. The 
tickets for the cheapest were fifty cents a course; 
for the others they were a dollar, or even two 
dollars. At our house this made no difference, 
because tickets to everything — concerts, lectures, 
and the rest — were sent to the newspaper office, 
and practically we children went to any such 
entertainments as we liked. 

One of these societies would arrange a course 
of lectures. The whole course might be on 
chemistry. I remember such a course from Pro- 
fessor Webster. It was conducted with all his 
brilliant power of experiment, and listened to 
with enthusiasm by four or five hundred people. 
I remember another course by John Farrar on 
the steam-engine. I heard in the Useful Knowl- 



126 A New England Boyhood 

edge course several of Mr. Waldo Emerson's bio- 
graphical lectures. The Useful Knowledge course 
would be perhaps on Tuesday evening, the Mer- 
cantile Library on Wednesday, the ]\Iechanics' on 
Thursday. Eventually halls were built specially 
for such lectures. There was one favorite hall in 
the Masonic Temple, which is now occupied, as 
rebuilt, by Messrs. Stearns. I suppose this hall 
would hold five hundred people. The seats rose 
rapidly, as in the lecture-room of a medical col- 
lege, so that people could see all the experiments 
or pictures on the platform. 

To such an entertainment you went, and if you 
were old enough you took a friend of the other 
sex. You arrived there half an hour before the 
lecture began, and walked from seat to seat, 
talking with the people whom you found there. 
After the lecture had gone on half an hour or 
more there was a recess, and again you walked 
about from seat to seat, perhaps chose another 
seat, if the first had not been satisfactory. At the 
end of a lecture of maybe an hour and a half in 
length you went home with anybody who chose 
to invite you. At the house you went to there 
was the invariable dish of oysters, or crackers and 
cheese, or whatever was the evening meal of that 
particular evening. And thus the lyceum lecture 
of that time played a quite important part in the 
social arrangements of growing boys and girls. 

Of its advantage as a system of instruction 
I can say hardly too much. Of course the 



A New England Boyhood i 27 

instruction given was superficial. I have lived 
seventy years in the world, and I have never 
found any instruction that was not superficial. 
But it was instruction ; it was instruction given by 
first-rate men, who knew how to teach ; and it 
was systematic instruction. The lecturer of to-day 
takes an epigrammatic phrase for his subject, as 
he calls it; it is the " Philosophy of Mathematics," 
or it is the "Mathematics of Philosophy." He 
speaks well, he brings in interesting stories, he 
gives a little information, and the public which 
sees him and hears him is amused. Someone 
asked James Russell Lowell once whether he 
supposed that the average audience of an interior 
town in New York cared much for Beaumont 
and Fletcher. He said very frankly: "I do not 
suppose they care for Beaumont and Fletcher at 
all. But I suppose they have heard of me and 
want to see me, and a good way to see me is to 
pay for my lecture, sit in front of me, and see 
and hear me for the hour in which I am reading 
something which interests me." This is very 
genuine; it is all right; it is a good bit of public 
entettainment for people who have been tired to 
death by the work of the day. But it is 
not instruction. Dear Starr King used to say: 
" A lyceum lecture consists of five parts of sense 
and five of nonsense. There are not more than 
five people in New England who know how to 
mix them. But I am one of the five." All 
lecturers do not keep to his recipe. 



I 28 A New England Boyhood 

On the other hand, I believe that if we could 
wipe out the whole nonsense of the evening 
lessons from the school curriculum; if we could 
make teachers teach, where now they simply hear 
the lesson which somebody else has taught; 
if then we would reserve our evenings for instruct- 
ing intelligent boys and girls in the fundamental 
principles of a good many things which are best 
taught by lectures, I believe that we should 
improve the system of public instruction to-day. 
It would require a good deal of work on the part 
of a great many intelligent people. Possibly some 
time there will be a school committee which will 
think such an enterprise worthy of attention. 

A few years ago I looked in, late in the evening, 
upon a pretty little party of one of the largest 
classes in my own Sunday-school. I met there 
perhaps thirty of the sweetest and most charming 
of the younger women in Boston. They had 
assembled at the invitation of their teacher, who 
had recently travelled in the East, and they had 
been spending the evening in conversation with 
one another and with her, and in examining the 
curiosities, and especially the photographs, which 
she had brought from Egypt, Syria, and Greece. 
In this large and brilliant company I was the 
only gentleman. At half-past ten, after a little 
supper, we all gathered to go home. Comparing 
the detail of Boston life with what it would have 
been fifty years before, I was interested to see that 
these young ladies all went home without escort 



A New England Boyhood i 29 

from the other sex. Some of them had ordered 
their carriages; many took street cars, which 
passed the house in one direction or the other, 
and which would leave them within a block of 
their own residences. It is certainly highly 
creditable to Boston that a body of women, 
young or old, can use the evening in such a way, 
and can disperse to their homes at such an hour 
with no companionship but what they give to one 
another, and with no hazard of insult. 

But I thought then, and I have often said since, 
that such a social order was wholly unlike the 
social order in which I grew up. When I was 
a boy of eight, or nine, or ten, no sister of mine 
would have gone to take tea with a friend but one 
of her brothers would have been detailed to go for 
her and bring her home at eight or nine o'clock. 
I am quite clear that in those days the Hfe of 
young people involved a great deal more of the 
visiting of both sexes together than it does now. 
I do not mean to speak of the life of boys of fif- 
teen years old and over. I speak of the life of 
boys of all ages, from five or six years upward. 

The function of tea-parties was quite difi"erent 
from that of dinner-parties. You would invite two 
or three boys and girls who were friends of your 
children to come and take tea, where now you 
would hardly invite children of the same age to 
come and dine. Now if this function happened to 
be exercised in the house of old-fashioned people 
it had some rather queer attendants — or what 

9 



130 A New England Boyhood 

would seem queer to the boy of the present day. 
For instance, one of the rehcs of Revolutionary 
times was the general impression that no boy could 
ever serve his country, unless he were trained as a 
public speaker. I think this is true now, and it was 
known to be true then. Consequently when you 
were at such a party as I have described, the 
evening's entertainment of playing old maid, teeto- 
tum games, jack-straws, or whatever might occupy 
the young people, would be interrupted, from time 
to time, by an appeal to the boys of the party to 
" speak a piece " for the benefit of the elders. 
There was a certain compliment implied in being 
asked to " speak a piece," but it was not a great 
compliment, for every boy was asked, not to say 
compelled, to do so. It would have been bad 
form to decline to speak, quite as much as it would 
be to sit at a dinner-table and decline to eat any- 
thing before you, as if it were of a quality poorer 
than that to which you were accustomed. 

Accordingly you had one or two " pieces " in 
mind which you were prepared to " speak." 
When you were called upon — when the old 
ladies, at their side of the room, had made up 
their minds that it was time for this exercise to go 
forward — you were told, " Master Edward " (or 
Master Oliver, or Master Alexander), "the com- 
pany would like to have you speak a piece." You 
demurred as little as you could, you went into a 
corner, you made a bow, and you spoke a piece. 
You then went back to your cards or other enter- 



A New England Boyhood i 3 1 

tainment. I do not remember that the girls sang 
songs, as it seems to me they should have done, 
under the circumstances. 

At such a little party, again, invariably the tray 
was brought in as the evening went by, and you 
ate the nuts and raisins or figs, which were gener- 
ally something you did not have at home. Per- 
haps this is always one of the charms of social 
life. 

There may be, by the way, no other opportunity 
in these papers to quote the amusing passage 
from Dr. Palfrey on salt codfish. It is in his 
admirable chapter on New England life, in which 
he followed the example of Macaulay's cele- 
brated chapter describing the family institutions of 
England. 

Forty years ago I was so situated as to know uncom- 
monly well the habits of different classes of people in 
different parts of the country. Till a later period than 
this the most ceremonious Boston feast was never set 
out on Saturday (then the common dinner-party day) 
without the dunfish at one end of the table ; abundance, 
variety, pomp of other things, but that unfailingly. It 
was a sort of New England point of honor ; and luxuri- 
ous livers pleased themselves, over their nuts and wine, 
with the thought that, while suiting their palates, they 
had been doing their part in a wide combination to 
maintain the fisheries and create a naval strength. 

There was one function of those days which has 
been admirably improved in the customs of later 



132 A New England Boyhood 

days. Franklin left a small fund to the city, to be 
expended in medals for the most deserving 
scholars. The Franklin medal was first awarded 
in 1792, is awarded to the present time, and is a 
good badge of honor to the genuine Boston boy. 
The school committee and the government of the 
city dined together, on the day of the school anni- 
versary, in Faneuil Hall, and the boys who received 
the Franklin medals were then first initiated into the 
forms of a public dinner. There must have been 
some sort of a procession — I do not know, for I 
never had a Franklin medal — and the boys sat in 
Faneuil Hall and heard the speaking. But as 
years went on, after the time of which I speak, 
and particularly after the girls began to receive 
city medals, it was seen that a much pleasanter 
entertainment could be devised for the children 
than a feast at which the officers of the city govern- 
ment took the principal part, and in which almost 
all parties drank more wine than was good for 
them. And in these later days the mayor holds a 
great reception in the large Mechanics' Hall ; he 
gives to every graduating girl a bouquet, and the 
boys and girls dance together to music which the 
city provides. I mention the contrast, because I 
am quite sure that in the years between 1826 and 
1837 there would have been a religious prejudice 
in some quarters against dancing, which would 
have prevented any such public celebration. 

The boys were in touch with the large public 
in their unauthorized and unrecognized connection 



A New England Boyhood 133 

with the fire department. Boston was still a 
wooden town, and the danger of fire was, as it is 
in all American cities, constantly present. There 
hung in our front entry two leather buckets; in 
each of them was certain apparatus which a person 
might need if he were in a burning house. 
Strange to say, there was a bed-key, that he might 
take down a bedstead if it were necessary. These 
were relics of a time when my father had been a 
member of one of the private fire companies. In 
those associations each man was bound to attend 
at any fire where the property of other members 
of the association was in danger; and there were 
traditions of father's having been present at the 
great Court Street fire, for instance. But these 
fire clubs either died out or became social institu- 
tions, as the Fire Club in Worcester exists to this 
day ; and nothing was left but the bucket as a sort 
of memorial of a former existence. 

Before our day the volunteer fire department 
system of Boston had been created, and there 
were similar systems in all large cities. Of 
course we boys supposed that ours was the best 
in the world; each boy in Boston supposed that 
the engine nearest his house was the best engine 
in the world, and that, on occasion, it could throw 
water higher than any other engine. It could 
likewise, on occasion, pump dry any engine that 
was in line with it. I need not say that these 
notions of the boys were simply superstitions, 
wholly unfounded in fact. Our engine was the 



I 34 A New England Boyhood 

New York. The engine-house was one of a curi- 
ous mass of pubHc buildings that occupied the 
place where Franklin's statue now stands, in front 
of what was the court-house of that day. There 
was no electric fire alarm in those early days. The 
moment a fire broke out everybody who had any 
lungs ran up the street or down the street, or both 
ways, crying " Fire ! " and as soon as the churches 
could be opened, all the bells in Boston began to 
ring. Then the company which was to drag the 
New York to the fire began to assemble at its house, 
and naturally there was great pride in seeing that 
your engine was first in place. You learned where 
the fire was, not by any signal, but by the rumor 
of the street. It was at the North End, or at the 
South End, or on the wharves, or on " Nigger 
Hill." As soon as boys and men, of whatever con- 
nection, arrived, sufficient in combined strength to 
drag the engine, it started, under the direction of 
such officer of the company as might be present. 
The members of the company had no uniforms, so 
far as I remember; they joined the lines as quickly 
as they could, but there were always enough people 
to pull. As I have intimated, it was everybody's 
business to attend at the fire. 

When you arrived at the spot there would be a 
general caucus as to the method of attack, yet I 
think there were people in command. Afterwards 
a gentleman named Amory, highly respected by 
all of us, was chief engineer. Whatever the cau- 
cus directed was done, with as much efficiency as 



A New England Boyhood 135 

was possible under such democratic institutions. 
But, in the first place, the probabilit}^ was that there 
was no water near. The Jamaica Pond aqueduct 
carried water in log pipes to the lower levels of the 
city ; but, for fully half the city, there was no such 
supply, and wells had to be relied upon. Every 
engine, therefore, which was good for anything, 
was a " suction engine," as it was called ; that is, 
it was able to pump from a well, as well as able to 
throw water to an indefinite height. The engine 
that arrived first repaired to the well best known in 
that neighborhood, or, if the occasion were fortu- 
nate, to the sea, and began to pump. The engine 
that arrived next took station next to this, and 
pumped from it through a long line of hose; and 
so successive engines carried the water to the place 
where some foreman directed it upon the flames. 
It was thus that the different engines attained their 
celebrity, as one pumped the tub of another dry, 
while the unfortunate members were " working 
the brakes " to their best to keep it full. 

The buckets of which I have spoken were the 
remains of a yet earlier period, when people formed 
themselves in line to the well or to the sea, and 
passed buckets backward and forward — full if they 
were going toward the fire, empty if they were 
going away; and the water was thus thrown 
upon such flames as chose to wait for it. 

When one writes this, one wonders that Boston 
was not burned down four times a year; indeed, 
there were many bad fires in those days. The 



136 A New England Boyhood 

system called out some of the most energetic and 
public-spirited young fellows of the town, and after 
a while they were exempt from service in the 
militia. Well they might be, for their service as 
firemen was far more valuable to the community, 
and far more oppressive in time and health, than 
any service in the militia of those days. They felt 
their power, and asserted it once too often. In the 
mayoralty of Mr. Samuel A. Eliot a company did 
something it should not have done, or refused to 
do something it was told to do ; with a firm hand, 
he turned them all out, and created the system of 
the fire department of to-day, in which every man 
is paid for his services, and may be regularly called 
upon, whether he will or no, as a servant of the 
city. The introduction of steam fire-engines, and 
a sufficient supply of water, would in themselves 
have been enough to revolutionize the whole of 
the primitive method of extinguishing fire, had no 
such revolt of the fire-companies compelled a rev- 
olution. 

I need hardly say that the old method interested 
to the full every boy in town. If his father and 
mother would let him, he attended the fire, where 
he could at least scream " Fire ! " if he could not 
do anything else. If a boy were big enough he was 
permitted almost to kill himself by working at the 
brakes. This was the most exhausting method for 
the application of human power that has been con- 
trived ; but there was power enough to be wasted, 
and, until the introduction of steam, it was every- 



A New England Boyhood 137 

where used. It is still used on board ships which 
have no steam power. Every enterprising boy re- 
garded it as the one wish of his life that he might 
be eighteen years old, so that he could join the 
fire-company in his particular neighborhood; and 
even if he had not attained that age, he attached 
himself to the company as a sort of volunteer aid, 
and, as I say, was permitted, as a favor, to assist in 
running through the streets, dragging at the long 
rope which drew the engine. 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE WORLD NEAR BOSTON 

The Broad Street Riot, so called, on the afternoon 
of June II, 1837, was an event which of course 
had great interest for the boys of the period. It 
was the fortune of very few of them, however, who 
were decently brought up, to have any hand in 
that conflict; for, as I have said in another chapter 
of these recollections, people in those days went 
to "meeting" as regularly in the afternoon as 
they did in the morning. 

If there should be need to-day for the sudden 
appearance of the military forces of Boston on a 
Sunday afternoon, I think that the officers of those 
forces would be looked for quite as readily at the 
Browning Club or a chess club, or possibly even 
exercising their horses somewhere within ten miles 
of Boston, as at any place of public worship. But 



138 A New England Boyhood 

my whole personal recollection of the Broad Street 
Riot is that, of a sudden, the bell of Brattle Street 
Church struck " backward," and the gentlemen 
who were of the First Regiment rose and left their 
seats, and went down to the armory at Faneuil 
Hall to join their companies, not to say lead them. 
It was said, and I believe truly, that a sergeant 
formed the first men who arrived in skeletons of 
companies, and in a skeleton of a regiment. 
George Tyler Bigelow, afterwards chief justice of 
the Supreme Court, was the first commissioned 
officer who arrived. He was a lieutenant in the 
New England Guards or the Light Infantry. He 
ordered the regiment out of the armory, and com- 
manded it till he met a superior officer. The 
story was that the command changed half a dozen 
times before the regiment reached Broad Street, 
where firemen and Irishmen were fighting. Of 
which I saw and remember nothing. But the 
departure of those gentlemen from church, whom 
we would have joined so gladly, fixed the whole 
afTair in our memories. In a boy journal of the 
time, I find the comment, after I had read the 
newspaper account, " The Irish got well beaten, 
but the firemen appear to have been as much in 
the wrong as they." 

In all these reminiscences I am well aware that 
our lives were much less affected by the daily 
news from abroad than are the lives of people 
now. Certainly Boston regarded itself more as a 
metropolis than it does now. And for this there 



A New England Boyhood i 39 

was good reason : for Boston had much less con- 
nection with the rest of the world than it has now. 
It had a foreign commerce, and the average boy- 
expected to go to sea some time or other. But I 
recollect times when a vessel from England brought 
thirty-five days' news ; all through the time of 
which I am writing it took three days for a letter 
to go to Washington ; and although people no 
longer offered prayers for their friends when they 
were going to New York, still a journey to New 
York was comparatively a rare business. In my 
third year in college I wanted to send a parcel of 
dried plants to a botanist in New York. There 
was no proper ** express," and I asked it as a per- 
sonal favor of a young man named Harnden, 
whom I knew as a conductor on the Boston and 
Worcester Railroad, that he would give the parcel 
to someone who would give it to someone else 
who would give it to my correspondent. It was 
because Mr. Harnden had so many such personal 
favors in hand that he established Harnden's 
Express, which was, I think, the first of the organ- 
ized expresses which existed in this country. 

I find it difficult to make the Boston boy or girl 
of to-day understand how different was Boston life, 
thus shut in from the rest of the world, from our 
life, when, as I suppose, at least one hundred 
thousand people enter Boston every day, and as 
many leave it for some place outside. 

As late as May, 1845, ^vhen I was twenty-three 
years old, I had an engagement to go from Boston 



140 A New England Boyhood 

to Worcester Saturday afternoon. I was to preach 
there the next day. When, at three o'clock, I 
came to the station of the Worcester road, there 
was an announcement that, from some accident on 
the hne above, no train would leave until Monday. 
The three o'clock train, observe, was the latest 
train of Saturday. I crossed Boston to the Fitch- 
burg station and took the train for Groton or 
Littleton. There I took a stage for Lancaster, 
where I slept. ^ In the morning, with a Worcester 
man who had been caught in Boston as I was, I 
took a wagon early, and we two drove across to 
Worcester. That is to say, as late as 1845 there 
were but two men in Boston to whom it was nec- 
essary that they should go to Worcester that after- 
noon. And this was ten years after railroad 
communication had been established. 

Before railroad communication was open, inter- 
course with other States, or with what now seem 
neighboring cities, was very infrequent. In 1832 
my father went to Schenectady to see the Albany 
and Schenectady Railroad, and, I believe, to order 
some cars for the Boston and Worcester road. 

1 As I write these notes, in September, 1S92, just as we have 
heard of Mr. Whittier's death, there is a certain interest in saying 
that it was on this occasion that I first met him. As the handful 
of passengers entered the stage which was to take us to Lancaster, 
Mr. Whittier was one of the number. He did not tell his name 
to anyone, and it was many years before I knew that he was one 
of those whose pleasant conversation enlivened the dark ride. I 
can hardly say that I saw him, but he was kind enough afterwards 
always to remember that I made his acquaintance on that occa- 
sion. 



A New England Boyhood 141 

He also went to New York City on the business 
of that road. I think he had been to that city but 
once since 1 805, when he went there on his way 
from Northampton to Troy. Yet if anybody was 
to travel he would have been apt to. He was a 
journalist, intensely interested in internal improve- 
ment. He had a large business correspondence 
in New York, and was well known there. I was 
myself nineteen years old when I first visited New 
York. 

In 1 841 I had a chance to overhaul the old 
register at the hotel at Stafford Springs in Con- 
necticut. Stafford Springs was, and is, a watering- 
place of a modest sort, where is a good, strong 
iron spring — good for boys with warts, and indeed 
for anyone who needs iron in his blood. It was 
quite the fashion to go to Stafford Springs from 
different parts of New England, in the earlier part 
of the century. In this old register it was inter- 
esting to see how universal was the custom by 
which people came there in their own carriages. 
What followed was that people who had no car- 
riages of their own hardly travelled for pleasure 
at all. 

So was it that, in the years of my boyhood, 
Boston people, with very few exceptions, lived in 
Boston the year round. People did not care to 
go to the theatre in midsummer, and I think the 
theatres were generally closed for six or eight 
weeks when the days were longest. Perhaps 
Boston used the matchless advantages of her bay 



142 A New England Boyhood 

more when she had httle communication with 
points beyond it. Perhaps the entertainments of 
the bay seemed more important because there 
were few, if any, excursions for pleasure excepting 
those which the water offered. 

Nahant was seized upon as a seashore resort as 
early as 18 19. The sea serpent had appeared in 
1 817. The hotel on the southeastern point, long 
since burned down, was a pretty, piazza-guarded 
building; and, as the steamboat Hojisatonic went 
down to Nahant every morning, and came back 
every night, a day at Nahant made a charming 
summer expedition, which we young folks relied 
upon at least once a year. At Nahant, at 
Chelsea Beach, at Nantasket, at Sandwich, and 
at Gloucester I made my acquaintance with the 
real ocean. At Nahant I made my first acquaint- 
ance with the joy of the bowling alley, and 
first saw the game of billiards. By the way, I 
remember that, in lecturing to my class in college, 
as late as 1837, Professor Lovering had to tell the 
class, as a fact which half of them did not know, 
that when one billiard-ball strikes another it may 
stop itself, while it communicates its motion to 
the other. I doubt if half the young men who 
heard him had ever seen a billiard-table at that 
time. 

There were but one or two steamboats in the 
harbor, so that the " excursion " of to-day was 
very infrequent. But all the more would people 
go down the bay for fishing-parties, on sailing 



A New England Boyhood 143 

vessels — more, I should think, than they do now. 
Perhaps there was something in foreign commerce 
which gave to those engaged in it a sort of 
absolute freedom sometimes, sandwiched in with 
hard work at others, in an alternate remission 
of work and play, which the modern merchant 
seldom enjoys. Your ship came in from Liver- 
pool or from Calcutta, and you and all your staff, 
down to the boy who swept out the office and 
trimmed the lamps, were busy, morning, noon, 
and night, till her cargo was disposed of, and 
perhaps till she was fitted for another voyage. 
But then, if no other of your ships arrived, there 
would be a lull; and if Tom, Dick, or Harry came 
in to propose a fishing-party you were ready. 

However this may be, the history and expe- 
riences of such parties made a considerable 
element of summer life. The anecdote of General 
Moreau belongs to them, and I will print it, 
though it was told a generation before my time. 
When General Moreau was in exile from France 
he came on his travels to Boston. Among other 
entertainments he was taken down the bay on a 
fishing-party. As they dined, or after dinner, 
excellent Colonel Messenger, whose singing is 
still remembered with pleasure, was asked to favor 
the company with a song, and he sang the fine 
old English song of "To-morrow." The refrain 
is in the words : 

To-morrow, to-morrow, 

Will be everlasting to-morrow. 



144 ^ New England Boyhood 
The French exile did not understand English 
as well as he did the art of war, and when Colonel 
Messenger came to these words, at the end of 
each verse, he supposed, naturally enough, that 
he was hearing a song made in his own honor: 

To Moreau, to Moreau, 

Je n'entends pas bien, mais to Moreau. 

And so he rose, as each verse closed, put his hand 
to his heart, blushed, and bowed gratefully, as to 
a personal compliment. And his hosts were too 
courteous to undeceive him. 

The Harvard Navy Club, an institution long 
since dead, used to " go down," as the abbreviated 
phrase was, every year. " Go down " was short 
for "go down the bay and fish." The Navy Club 
was a club of those men Avho received no college 
honors. The laziest man in a class was the " Lord 
High Admiral"; the next to the laziest was the 
•* Admiral of the Blue," and so on. 

Perhaps there are not so many fish in the bay 
as there were then. Perhaps I am not so much 
interested in the boys who take them. But I 
do not see, when I cross the bridge to East 
Cambridge, any boy patiently sitting on the rail 
waiting to catch flounders, as I have done many 
a happy afternoon. Perhaps, as civilization has 
come in, the flounders have stayed lower down 
the bay. 

Travelling, in short, was done by retail in those 
days, and such combinations as those of to-day, by 



A New England Boyhood 145 

which a hundred thousand people are thrown 
upon Boston daily, and as many taken away, were 
w^holly unknown, not to say not dreamed of. 
Retail travelling, if we are to use that expression, 
had some points of interest which do not enliven 
the career of a traveller who is boxed up in a train 
with three hundred and ninety-nine others, all of 
them to be delivered, " right side up with care," 
at the place they wish to go to, while none of 
them have what John Locke would call an " ade- 
quate idea " of the places on the way, if indeed 
any of them have any idea. 

The first of such expeditions which I remember, 
excepting one on the Middlesex Canal, which has 
been referred to, was in August and September of 
1S26, when my father took all of us — that is, my 
mother and four children — to Sandwich, where 
he was going to enjoy a week's shooting. The 
other gentlemen of the party were Daniel Webster, 
Judge Story, and Judge Fay. Mr. Webster took 
his family with him ; 1 think the other gentlemen 
did not take theirs. All of us stayed at Fessen- 
den's tavern — charmingly comfortable then, I 
fancy, as I know it was afterwards. My early 
memories of the expedition are quite distinct. It 
was here and then that I first fired the gun which 
is the oldest sporting gun here at Matunuck; and 
a good gun it is, if people are not above an old- 
fashioned percussion cap. But in those days it 
had a flintlock. The general use of what are now 
unknown to young sportsmen, percussion caps, 

10 



146 A New England Boyhood 

belongs some years later. The bigger boys, 
Fletcher Webster and my brother Nathan, would 
be taken out with the gentlemen to hold the 
horses (in chaises, observe) on the beach, while 
their fathers walked about and shot what they 
might. But we little fellows stayed at home, to be 
lifted to the seventh heaven if a loaded gun were 
brought home at night which we might aim and 
fire at a shingle. For us and the girls the princi- 
pal occupation, I remember, was playing dinner 
and tea with the pretty glassware which the Sand- 
wich works were just beginning to make. I 
believe I have somewhere at this day some speci- 
mens of their work for children. 

On this expedition we went and returned, some 
in the '* stage " and some in my father's chaise — 
making the journey, I think, in a day. But gen- 
erally, with so large a host as ours — which 
included Fullum — we went on the summer jour- 
ney, whatever it was, in what was then, as it is 
indeed now, called a " barouche." The names 
" landau," " victoria," and the like were, I think, 
unknown. As this business was by no means pecu- 
liar to our family, and as it belongs to a civilization 
quite unlike ours, I will describe it in detail. 

We were to go to Cape Ann, and for perhaps a 
week to take such comfort as the great " tavern " 
at Gloucester would give. Observe that the word 
" tavern " was still used, as I think it now is where 
a tavern exists in the heart of New England, for 
what the Englishman calls an " inn." We talk 



A New England Boyhood 147 

now of the Wayside Inn, the Wayland Inn, and so 
on, but this is all in a labored, artificial, and indeed 
foreign speech introduced from England within a 
generation past. To prepare for such an expedi- 
tion Fullum would be sent from stable to stable 
to hire the best barouche he could find, and a 
span of horses. Happy the boy who selected him- 
self, or was selected by destiny, to accompany 
him on this tour of inspection ! When the happy 
morning arrived Fullum brought round his car- 
riage and horses early, fastened on the trunk 
behind — for I think there never was but one; 
and the two elders, and in this case of Cape Ann 
the five children, with books and hand baggage, 
always with maps of the country, were packed 
away in and on the carriage. Both of us boys, 
of course, sat on the box with Fullum, who drove. 
If, on any such occasion, there were a very little 
boy, Fullum would arrange a duplicate set of reins 
for the special use of the youngster, which were 
attached, not to the horses' bits, but to the rings 
on the pads. In this particular expedition to 
Cape Ann we stopped at the Lynn Mineral Spring 
Hotel, long since abandoned, I think, and reached 
Gloucester only perhaps on the second day. 

What happened to the old people there I am 
sure I do not know. To us children there were 
those ineffable delights of playing with the ocean, 
the kindest, safest, and best playmate which any 
child can have. Sandwich had given us only the 
first taste of it. Here we had our first real knowl- 



148 A New England Boyhood 

edge of what sea-urchins are, and what people call 
"sand dollars," horseshoe crabs, cockles, rays* 
eggs, and the various sea-weeds, from devil's 
aprons up or down. The cape had not assumed 
the grandeur of a summer watering-place. The 
modern names were unknown. There was no 
Rockport or Pigeon Cove to go to. It was Sandy 
Bay or Squam to which one drove. I remember 
the ejaculation of some fishermen's children, as 
they saw the barouche for the first time : " What 
is it? It ain't the mail, and it ain't a shay." 

At that time, and certainly as late as 1842, a 
group of children in the country, if they saw a 
carriage approaching, would arrange themselves 
hastily in a line on one side of the road and " make 
their manners." That is, they would all bow as 
the carriage passed. The last time that I remem- 
ber seeing this was in 1842, in Hampshire County, 
as the stage passed by. It was done good- 
naturedly, with no sign of deference, but rather, I 
should say, as a pleasant recognition of human 
brotherhood in a lonely region — as two men, if 
they were not Englishmen, might bow to each 
other, wherever they were far from other men. 

In our particular family an annual journey was 
made to my grandfather's house in Westhampton, 
a pleasant town among the hills in Hampshire 
County, where my father was born. He took his 
wife there in his chaise when they were married, 
in 1816, and hardly a summer passed, until 1837, 
when he did not make the same journey with his 



A New England Boyhood 149 

whole family. This then numbered seven chil- 
dren, besides himself and my mother, and of 
course Fullum. To my father it was a matter 
of pride that on the last of these journeys we went 
on his own railroad to Worcester. In 1835 the 
carriage was taken on a truck on the passenger 
train, in which we rode ; but I need not say that 
Fullum preferred to sit in the carriage all the way, 
and did so. 

There was a charm in such half-vagrant journey- 
ing about which the Raymond tourist knows 
nothing. There was no sending in advance for 
rooms, and you took your chances at the tavern, 
where you arrived, perhaps, at nine o'clock at 
night. It may be imagined that the sudden 
appearance at the country tavern of a party of 
ten, of all ages from three months upwards, was 
an event of interest. In those times the selectmen 
knew what they meant, when they said that no 
person should dispense liquor who did not provide 
for travellers. Practically it was a convenience to 
any village to have a place w^here travellers could 
stay; and practically the people of that village 
said to the man whom they licensed to sell liquor, 
" If you have this privilege, you must provide a 
decent place of entertainment for strangers." One 
man kept the tavern, perhaps, for his life long. 
It had its reputation as good or poor, and you 
avoided certain towns because So-and-So did not 
keep a good house. The practical difficulty of 
such travelling in New England now, is that you 



150 A New England Boyhood 

are by no means sure of finding a comfortable 
place to sleep when your day's journey is over. 
The New England tavern of the old fashion held 
its own to the most advantage in later times in 
the State of Maine, on the roads back into the 
lumber region, and I dare say such comfortable 
houses for travellers may be found there now. 

These country taverns always had signs, gener- 
ally swinging from a post with a cross-bar, in front 
of the house. The sign might be merely the name 
of the keeper; this was a sad disappointment to 
young travellers. More probably it was the picture 
of the American eagle or of a rising sun. Neptune 
rising from the sea was a favorite device. I remem- 
ber at Worcester the Elephant. The portrait of 
General Wolfe still hangs at the Newburyport 
tavern, and there remain some General Washing- 
tons. After I was a man I had occasion to travel 
a good deal one summer in Northern Vermont, 
where the tavern signs still existed. Almost with- 
out exception their devices were of the American 
eagle with his wings spread, or of the American 
eagle holding the English lion in chains, or of the 
lion chained without any American eagle. These 
were in memory of Macomb's and McDonough's 
victories at Plattsburg and on the lake. They 
also, perhaps, referred to the fact that most of 
these taverns were supported by the wagons of 
smugglers, who, in their good, large peddlers' 
carts, provided themselves with English goods 
in Canada, which they sold on our side of the 



A New England Boyhood 151 

line. In our generation one is more apt to see 
a tavern sign in a museum than hanging on a 
gallows-tree. 

Meandering along through Leicester, Spencer, 
Belchertown, Ware, Amherst, Northampton, or 
some of these places, we arrived at my grand- 
father's pretty home in Westhampton on the 
morning of the third day. Then, for three or 
four days, came absolute and infinite joy. We 
had cousins there just our own ages of whom we 
were very fond. For the time of our visit they 
gave themselves, without stint or hindrance, to 
the entertainment of their friends from Boston. 
First of all, horses were to be provided, and 
saddles, that we boys might ride. Little did the 
country boys understand what joy it was to us 
to find ourselves scampering over the hills. Then 
there was the making of traps for woodchucks. 
If it chose to rain we were in the great workshop 
of the farm, using such tools as we had never seen 
at home. In the evening there were " hunt the 
slipper " and " blind-man's-buff," the latter an 
entertainment which we could follow even on Sun- 
day evening, as I believe I have said, and follow 
then with more enthusiasm than on other evenings, 
because other cousins and the children of neigh- 
bors came in to join with us. In that New England 
parsonage — never so called, by the way — the old 
Connecticut customs prevailed, and " the Sabbath " 
began promptly as the sun went down on Saturday 
night, and was well ended when the sun set on 



152 A New England Boyhood 

Sunday. The hills of Westhampton are high, and 
sunset on Sunday evening came early. 

So it was that the great joy of life was the visit 
at grandfather's every summer. My grandfather 
was the minister of this town for fifty-seven years. 
I think I saw the dear old gentleman last in 1834. 
It must have been in 1837, after his death, that we 
made the last visit there, when my grandmother 
was still living. I did not myself return to West- 
hampton for fifty years, when it was to preach in 
his pulpit. It was pleasant to find that, after two 
generations, the people of the town remembered 
him fondly, I found the pulpit of the meeting- 
house and the chancel behind it decorated with 
flowers, and the word " Welcome," wrought in 
flowers, hung above me. So I went back to the 
happiest days of my New England boyhood. 

I have already alluded to the infrequency of 
communication between this country home — for 
it was such to all of us children — and the home 
in Boston. The cousins in the country, when 
autumn came, would not forget us in Boston, 
and would crack butternuts and walnuts for us, 
of kinds they thought we should not have, pick 
out the great meats, and pack them carefully to be 
sent down. Such a box would be sent to North- 
ampton, and put on board a boat which went to 
Hartford. There it would be put on board a sloop, 
in which it was to sail out of the Connecticut River 
and around Cape Cod to Boston. In the same 
sloop was perhaps a keg of my grandmother's 



A New England Boyhood 153 

apple sauce, or some other treasure from the 
farm. Great joy for us if all these pleasant 
memorials arrived in time ; great sorrow if a 
letter came, stating that the sloop was frozen 
up opposite Lyme, or somewhere else in the 
Connecticut River, and would not appear with 
its precious cargo until the next spring. Such 
were the difficulties of sending a box one hundred 
and ten miles across Massachusetts in the year 
1830. 

To putting an end to such difficulties by the 
railroad system, my father gave much of the 
active part of his life, as I have before said. 
When it was thought crazy to talk about such 
things he talked about the possibilities of a 
railroad westwards. When it was necessary to 
induce men of capital to subscribe, with infinite 
difficulty he obtained a subscription of a million 
dollars capital for the Boston and Worcester 
Railroad. He was the first president and first 
superintendent of that railroad, and had the 
great joy of importing its first engine from 
Liverpool. This, as I have said, was the Meteor ; 
she was ordered from George Stephenson himself, 
immediately after the success of the Rocket in the 
famous railway trial between Liverpool and Man- 
chester in 1830. The arrival of the Meteor in 
Boston, with the engine-driver who was to set her 
up and to run her first trips, was a matter of great 
joy to us boys. At the same time the Yankee was 
built by a company in Boston, at their works 



154 A New England Boyhood 

at the cross-dam of the Mill-dam; and an engine 
always called the Colonel Long was built for the 
Boston and Worcester Railroad at Philadelphia, 
under the auspices of the same Colonel Long 
who gave the name to Long's Peak at the West. 
He was in the engineer service of the United 
States, and this engine was built to burn anthra- 
cite coal. 

The Meteor was at once set up in Boston, and 
started on her experimental trips. It is easy to 
see how much this would interest the men who 
had looked forward to her success, and, equally, 
how much it would interest their sons. The 
engine-driver was good to my brother and me, and 
we had the great pleasure of making some of the 
earliest of her trips with him. I have spoken of 
the opening of the road to West Newton. I think 
they must still have there the sign which was put 
up on David's Hotel, representing the engine and 
car of the period. It ought to be preserved in 
some historical collection there. Boston roused 
itself to the new interest, and every afternoon 
eight cars went out to Newton and back, that 
people might say they had ridden on the new rail- 
road. Many a straw hat was burned through by 
the cinders which lighted upon it, and many 
notions were gained for the future. 

What is now called the American system of the 
interior arrangement of cars, was first tried in the 
cars built for the Worcester Railroad at Worcester, 
by the founder of the present firm of Bradley. The 



A New England Boyhood 155 

suggestion was made, I believe, by my father ; he 
saw very early the difficulty of the old system, in 
which the conductor ran around on a platform on 
the outside. I remember, as among the close 
approaches to death which in any man's life stand 
out distinctly, that, when I was in college, I ran 
after a train on which I was to go to Natick, 
sprang upon it when in motion, and felt myself 
falling. I supposed that the last instant of my 
life had come while I fell for the first few inches. 
Then I found myself astride of the long, narrow 
platform on which I had intended to stand. Risks 
like this were what all the conductors of the early 
railroads ran; and I suppose, indeed, the English 
guards may have to run them, to a certain extent, 
to the present day. 

The Boston and Worcester station in 1833, and 
for some time after, was on the ground now 
occupied by Indiana Street and by Brigham's milk 
depot, between Washington Street and Tremont 
Street. Tremont Street had just been laid out on 
the level of the salt marshes. It was at the in- 
stance of the Worcester Railroad that its grade 
was raised, many years after, and that com- 
pany was obliged to take the cost of lifting the 
houses which had been built on the lower level. 
It is to that change of level that we owe it that the 
whole South End of Boston is now built on the 
level above the marsh, instead of being built, as 
the few houses originally on it were, scarcely 
above the level of hi2:h tide. 



156 A New England Boyhood 
CHAPTER IX 

THE WORLD BEYOND BOSTON 

All boys, from the nature of their make-up, are 
great politicians. The boys of sixty years ago 
were not unHke boys of to-day in this matter, and, 
when an election day came around, we were glad 
to spend as much time as we could at the places 
where people were voting. Happy the boy to 
whom some vote distributor would give a handful 
of votes, and happier he who could persuade 
someone to take a ballot from those which he had 
given to him. This, by the way, was not very 
long after the time when a certain superstition 
held in Massachusetts by which every ballot was 
written. Early in the century gentlemen inter- 
ested in an election would call on the women of 
the family, if they could write well, to write out 
ballots which could be used at the polls. But I 
never saw such written ballots. 

The separation between Boston and the rest of 
the world affected a good deal the political com- 
binations. I do not suppose that our present 
compact system of national political parties could 
possibly exist without the convenience of the tele- 
graph and the railroad. I should say, historically, 
that it began in the great convention of young 
men which was held in the city of Baltimore in 
the year 1840 by way of advancing the election of 



A New England Boyhood 157 

President Harrison. Independent and sovereign 
as Massachusetts was in the election of 1836, her 
National Republicans, as they called themselves, 
nominated Mr. Webster as candidate for Presi- 
dent, though nobody else nominated him, and the 
electoral votes of Massachusetts were given for 
him and for Mr. Granger. The leaders of any 
American party would hesitate before they should 
make such a separate demonstration now. And 
this habit of separation shows itself more distinctly 
in the newspaper of the time. 

I have already said that I was a great deal in 
the printing-office of the Daily Advertiser, which 
my father edited, as well as in his book printing- 
office. He maintained with care and interest the 
old system of apprenticeship, and always had one 
or more bright boys, whom he had taken into his 
office that they might learn the whole art and 
mystery of printing and what concerned the pub- 
lication of a newspaper. One of these young men, 
to whose counsels and help we boys were largely 
indebted, still lives, honored in the community 
where he has been known for many years, as the 
the director of the Barnstable Patriot — Mr. Syl- 
vanus Phinney.i To have a boy a little older 
than yourself as your comrade in the office, to 
have him show you what you could handle and 
what you could not handle, was in itself a piece of 
education. 

1 Mr. Phinney died, universally respected, at his home in Barn- 
stable, 1899. 



158 A New England Boyhood 

Mr. Phinney could perhaps tell better than I 
can, a newspaper story, not of my boyhood, but of 
girlhood in Boston. In the year 1820 the conven- 
tion met which revised the constitution of Mas- 
sachusetts. The Advertiser published the full re- 
port of the proceedings, and this report was made 
up in my father's workroom, in the lower story of 
the house in Tremont Street. He was suffering at 
that time from an accident by which he nearly lost 
the sight of one of his eyes, and all his writing was 
done at home by my mother. So it would happen 
of an evening that the gentlemen most interested 
in the convention would look in at the house to 
revise the reports of their own speeches, and per- 
haps to consult about the work of the next day. 
Mr. Webster and Judge Story were two of the 
prominent leaders of that convention. They were 
on terms of the closest intimacy at our house, and 
would come in almost every evening for this pur- 
pose. Mother would be sitting in the room to do 
any writing which might be required, and, lest she 
should be called away to the baby of the time, the 
baby lay asleep in the cradle while the work of 
dictation went on. Speeches were made, proofs 
corrected, baby rocked, and undoubtedly a great 
deal of the fun of such bright young people passed 
to and fro with every evening. 

Afterwards, in friendly recognition of the hard 
night-work of the winter, when the convention 
was well over, and its proceedings were published 
in a volume which is now one of the cherished 



A New England Boyhood 159 

nuggets of the collectors, mother had a great cake 
made for the workmen at the office. She frosted 
it herself, and dressed it with what in those days 
they used to call " cockles " of sugar. These 
cockles generally had little scraps of poor verses, 
which were supposed to be entertaining. But in 
this case she had cut out from the proofs the 
epigrams of the convention debates, and as the 
apprentices and journeymen ate their cake they 
found, to their amusement, that the work of their 
own hands had furnished what were called the 
mottoes. 

The journalist of to-day thinks he is much ahead 
of the journalist of that time, and in many regards 
he is; but there were certain excitements which 
belonged to newspaper life then which do not 
belong to it now. The day when the Unicorn 
arrived in Boston, the first in the line of Cunard 
v^essels which have arrived regularly from that day 
to this, was one of these exciting days. My father 
went over in person upon the Unicom, talked with 
the officers, and came back with English news- 
papers almost as fresh as he had ever seen. I 
say " almost as fresh," because the passage of the 
Unicorn was, I think, twenty days, and we had 
traditions in the office of rapid runs of Baltimore 
clippers or other fast vessels which had come over 
in less time. It was after this that, in a winter 
passage, the Great Western at New York brought 
news which was thirty-five days later than the 
latest news which we had from Europe. In 



i6o A New England Boyhood 

earlier times there would be many instances of 
longer periods when neither continent knew any- 
thing of the other. 

Under such circumstances the newspaper editor 
depended much more upon his foreign corre- 
spondent than he does now. The foreign corre- 
spondent of to-day digests news of which he knows 
the details have already gone by telegraph. He 
is in some sort a foreign editor, but he does not 
expect to send the detail of news. And there was 
an element of chance about the arrival of sailing 
vessels which added to the curiosity of your morn- 
ing paper. In our office Mr. Ballard, who had the 
charge of the ship news, might board a vessel 
below in the harbor, whose captain had no idea 
that he had brought the latest news. Then this 
poor captain would be beset to hunt up every 
newspaper that he had on board. Perhaps he 
had been so foolish that he had not bought the 
last paper of the day on which he started. 
Whether he had or had not it was the business 
of the boat which boarded him first to get every 
paper he had, so that no other paper in town 
might have a word of his intelligence. Per- 
haps all these papers arrived at the office but a 
little while before you went to press ; then it was 
your business to make the best show you could of 
the news, and possibly it was your good fortune to 
be able to say that no other paper had it. 

I remember that we had the news of the French 
Revolution of 1830, which threw Charles X. from 



A New England Boyhood i6i 

the throne, on a Sunday morning. When such 
things happened the foreman in the office made up 
what was really an " Extra " by throwing to- 
gether, as quickly as he had them in type, a few 
galleys of the news ; in that case probably rapidly 
translated from the French papers. Then these 
galleys would be struck off on a separate hand- 
bill, and such hand-bills were circulated as 
" Extras." And it is to this habit that the present 
absurd nomenclature is due by which one buys 
every day an "Extra" which is published at a 
certain definite time. All this is fixed upon my 
mind, because, when I came home from " meet- 
ing" on that particular Sunday, I was told the 
news that there was another revolution in France, 
and had the "Extra" given me to carry down 
to Summer Street, where one of my uncles lived. 
There is a certain picturesqueness about the 
receipt and delivery of news, when it comes in 
such out-of-the-way fashions, which the boy or 
girl of to-day finds it hard to understand. 

Of course with type as much as we wanted, and 
all the other facilities for home printing, we 
printed our own newspapers. I do not think that 
at our house we did it so much as boys would to 
whom the making-up of a newspaper was not a 
matter of daily observation, involving a good deal 
of errand running and other work which was any- 
thing but play. But we older boys had the Fly, 
which was our newspaper, and my brother 
Charles, not long after, started the Coo7i, in the 



1 62 A New England Boyhood 

midst of the Harrison campaign, which survived 
for a good many years. 

I believe that the last issue of the Fly is that 
which records the death of Lafayette, in 1836. 
We had not type enough then to print more than 
one page at a time. Three pages of the Fly had 
been printed, and the fourth was still to be set up 
when the news of Lafayette's death arrived. This 
was too good a paragraph to be lost, and we knew 
we could anticipate every other paper in Boston 
by inserting it. But unfortunately the w's had 
given out. We had turned upside down all the 
ti's, we had, still they too had given out. Also, 
still more unfortunately for printers in this diffi- 
culty, Lafayette had chosen to die of an " in- 
fluenza," which disease was at that moment assert- 
ing itself under that name in France. It had not 
yet been called " la grippe," which would have 
saved us. We succeeded in announcing the death 
of " the good, generous, noble Lafayette," although 
" generous " needed one n and one n, and " noble " 
took one of the last «'s. The paragraph went on 
to say that the death was " caused by," and the 
last u was devoured by "caused." Then came the 
word " influenza." " The boldest held his breath for 
a time." But we were obliged ignominiously to go 
to press with the statement that his death was 
"caused by a cold." This was safe, and required 
no n and no ;/. Alas ! in the making-up of the 
form the precious 11 of the word "noble" fell out; 
and any library which contains a file of the Fly 



A New England Boyhood 163 

will show that its last statement to the world is 
that of the death of " the good, generous, oble 
Lafayette ; caused by a cold." Such are the 
exigencies of boy printers in all times. 

I have gone into detail as to the communica- 
tions between the people in the country and the 
people who lived in Boston, in the hope of mak- 
ing the reader feel distinctly the isolation which 
separated Boston from the rest of the world. 
That isolation has left its marks on the character 
of Boston till this day. It explains the amusing 
cockneyisms of Boston which make other people 
laugh at us, and a certain arrogance of provincial- 
ism which crops out very oddly among people 
who have sons and daughters in every part of the 
world, and whose communication is now so free in 
every direction. " In the beginning it was not 
so." The people of Boston had a very large 
foreign trade 'from its origin till comparatively 
recent times. Now they have a little, and more 
than half their population is of a stock which 
came very recently from Europe or Canada. But 
in the beginning of this century there was very 
little immigration from Europe. Indeed, what 
there was was looked upon with a certain dis- 
trust About the time I went to college, or a 
little later, a society of the most intelligent 
people in Boston was organized for the express 
purpose of keeping out foreign " immigration." 
We purists made a battle against that word. Pro- 



164 A New England Boyhood 

fessor Edward Channing would have resented the 
use of it in a college theme with the same bitter- 
ness with which Mr. Webster resented " in our 
midst " — a phrase which, I am sorry to say, you 
may now find almost everywhere. One of the 
most intelligent gentlemen in Boston was ap- 
pointed to the business of keeping out immi- 
grants — a business which can only be compared 
to Mrs. Partington's determination to sweep out 
the tide when it was rising in the English Chan- 
nel ! He had his office on Long Wharf, and 
wrote and forwarded circulars to Ireland to ex- 
plain to the people of Ireland that they had better 
not come to this country. At the same moment 
the very people who paid his salary were build- 
ing up a system of manufacturing and internal 
improvements which was actually impossible with- 
out the immigration which they had appointed 
him to check. 

There was at that time, however, a distinct 
determination on the part of the best people in 
Boston that it should be absolutely a model city. 
They had Dr. Channing preaching the perfecti- 
bility of human nature ; they had Dr. Joseph 
Tuckerman determined that the gospel of Jesus 
Christ should work its miracles among all sorts 
and conditions of men ; they had a system of 
public education which they meant to press to its 
very best ; and they had all the money which was 
needed for anything good. These men subscribed 
their money with the greatest promptness for any 



A New England Boyhood 165 

enterprise which promised the elevation of human 
society. 

In speaking of the lecture system I have already 
stated their notion that if people only knew what 
was right they would do what was right. So they 
founded first the Massachusetts Hospital, then its 
annex for the insane; then they made the State 
contribute to the deaf and dumb asylum in Hart- 
ford ; they established their asylum for the blind 
at South Boston. Indeed, they expected to 
trample out every human ill, exactly as the most 
optimistic young medical expert in New York at 
the moment when I write these lines expects to 
trample out every cholera bacillus who shall pre- 
sent its little head in sight of the lens of the 
most powerful microscope. What these excel- 
lent people might have done had Boston re- 
mained the funny little town it was in the year 
1820 I do not know. But it did not remain any 
such place. The population was then 43,298 ; in 
1830 it was 61,392. The increase in ten years 
is forty-one per cent of the population at the 
first enumeration — an increase which would be 
thought very remarkable in the growth of any 
old city now. It indicates great prosperity. In 
the same ten years the population of the city of 
New York increased from 123,706 to 202,589, 
an increase of sixty-four per cent. Such figures 
should be remembered, by the way, by people 
who tell us that the present rate of the increase 
of cities is without precedent. 



1 66 A New England Boyhood 

The growth, though rapid, and on the whole 
encouraging for the manufacturing system of New 
England, tended to divert capital to a certain ex- 
tent from that foreign commerce which had been 
created and nourished by European wars. So 
soon as capital placed itself in one or another 
site of the interior, as Lowell, Manchester, Fall 
River, Holyoke, and the rest came into existence, 
so soon, of course, the Boston boy found out that 
there was a world outside of State Street and Milk 
Street. And now that Boston capital loves to 
place itself at any point where capital is needed, 
between Lockwood's Cape in 82° north latitude 
and Terra del Fuego on the outside of the Strait 
of Magellan, there is no longer an opportunity for 
a Boston boyhood to be spent in the conditions 
which surrounded me. These were physically 
almost the same as those which surrounded the 
boyhood of Samuel Sewall in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, or Henry Knox in the eighteenth. 

CHAPTER X 

AT COLLEGE 

I WAS but thirteen years and five months old when 
I entered Harvard College, so that these memories 
of a New England boyhood carry us into college 
life. For as early an entrance as this was not un- 
usual in those days. My friend Dr. Andrew Pres- 
ton Peabody entered college as sophomore in his 



A New England Boyhood 167 

thirteenth year — at the precise age of twelve years 
and six months ; Edward Everett, twenty years be- 
fore, entered at the age of thirteen. The first 
scholar of my own class, Samuel Eliot, afterward 
president of Trinity College, was but a few months 
older than I. I think we were the two youngest 
members of the class, 

I have no idea that my father would have sent me 
to college so young but that my older brother was 
already there. We had always been together, and 
were absolutely attached to each other. In point 
of fact, as I have intimated already, at this moment, 
I should find it hard to think of any real knowl- 
edge of any sort which I have ever had, on any 
subject, of which I did not trace the " origins " to 
him. I suppose my father thought that he was 
the best adviser and instructor that I could have. 
Certainly he could not have sent me to Europe 
with any private tutor, with nearly the advantage 
which I received from being sent to Cambridge to 
live with my brother. Accordingly to Cambridge 
I was sent, although everybody knew that this was 
at a younger age than would be otherwise advis- 
able. I should not certainly advise anyone to 
send a boy to Cambridge at thirteen years of age 
now, though I believe there would be no difficulty 
in passing the Cambridge examinations at that 
age now, if a boy had been sensibly brought up, 
by teachers who understood what that examination 
is and is not. But the college was not then what 
it is now, and life after one left college was not 



1 68 A New England Boyhood 

quite what it is now. I have certainly never re- 
gretted that after I left college I had six clear 
years for seeing the world, before there was even 
an apparent necessity of my binding myself to the 
regular work of my profession. Now this could 
hardly have been had I entered college at the age 
of sixteen or seventeen, which was, I suppose, the 
age of most of my classmates. 

It must have been on a morning in the end of 
August that this brother of mine and I started to- 
gether, in my uncle's " chaise," which had been bor- 
rowed for the occasion, that I might present myself 
at six o'clock at University Hall for examination. 
The examinations are absurd enough now, but I 
think they do not make them begin at six in the 
morning. At that time, however, morning prayers 
were at six o'clock as soon as the term began, and 
it was considered proper that we should be intro- 
duced into the college routine at the beginning. 

The examination was to last from six in the 
morning to seven in the evening on that day, and 
from six till two on the next day; and with the 
exception of an hour for dinner we were kept in 
the various recitation rooms all the time. After 
two on the second day we loafed round the yard, 
keeping near enough to the door of University 
Hall to know when we were called, one by one. 
Each person as he was called then entered what 
we afterwards called the " corporation room," 
where he found the president and members of 
the faculty, and each one received the announce- 



A New England Boyhood 169 

ment of his success or of his faikire. You were 
admitted on probation, as it was called, there being 
a theory that you were not matriculated until the 
end of the first term. But we all knew that every- 
body who was admitted was matriculated ; and 
this was merely one of a set of traditional forms 
of which I will speak in another place. 

I rather think that I derived a certain contempt 
which I have always felt for these mechanical func- 
tions called examinations from my experience on 
this occasion. As it happened, my brother and I 
arrived, in the chaise alluded to, early enough in- 
deed, but later than the great body of the candi- 
dates, of whom there were about eighty. For 
instance, my own classmates of the Latin School 
had come out in an omnibus, which had been 
engaged to come at that early hour. We found, 
therefore, that they were already registered on 
the list of applicants, while my name came in at 
the very end, with certain other boys who had ar- 
rived separately. It is an illustration of the sim- 
plicity of those days that one of these boys at least 
had ridden twenty miles that morning, with his 
father, in the chaise in which they had come from 
Berwick in Maine. This was Francis Brown 
Hayes; his place in the alphabet brought him 
next to me in all the lists of our class, and we 
were intimate friends till the end of his life. 
Samuel Longfellow, another of my nearest 
friends, who has lately died, was another of 
these sporadic persons; he had come with his 



170 A New England Boyhood 

father in a chaise from Portland in Maine, by a 
two days' journey. 

We were told off into twelve sections, and pro- 
ceeded to the examination. It was on much the 
same lines on which the examination is conducted 
now, with perhaps less of writing and more oral 
questions. There was, however, no examination 
in French or in German. I think the Latin and 
Greek and mathematics went as far as the required 
examination does now; but if a person wanted to 
enter in advance he presented himself on another 
day. In every class there were a great many per- 
sons in those days who " entered sophomore," as 
the phrase was. That is to say, the course was 
abridged to three years by these boys who had re- 
mained for two freshman years in the preparatory 
school. I believe that the persons most competent 
in the university are very glad to have some such 
course as this taken now ; it is an easy way of 
solving the question whether the undergraduate 
course should be three years or four, and how 
much work should be thrown upon the prepara- 
tory schools. 

I afterwards knew as teachers most of the gentle- 
men who conducted that examination. But there 
was one of them, who assigned us our places, gave 
us all general directions, and, in short, looked after 
us through the two days in the kindest manner 
possible, whom I did not meet again for many 
years. I now think it was Theodore Parker, 
whom I did not know personally till long after 



A New England Boyhood 171 

this time. I have ever since liked to think of him 
as showing such friendly sympathy and untiring 
consideration for the needs of seventy or eighty 
dazed and bewildered boys. 

To us Latin School boys the examination was 
easy enough in most of its details. I know I went 
to it, and through it, with the light-hearted spirit 
in which it is best to meet life always, taking it for 
granted, that is, that I was at least equal to the 
average, and that, with good luck, I should come 
out better than the average. There was not one 
of us who had the slightest idea that he should 
not pass the examination. In fact, the only ques- 
tion I remember is the question whether Amster- 
dam were north of London; this was put to a 
dozen or more of us, in a good-natured friendly 
way, by George F. Simmons, afterwards an inter- 
esting and valuable preacher. Everyone of the 
twelve answered the question wrong. We were not, 
however, conditioned on geography, although I do 
not remember that any other such questions were 
put to me than this, on which I came out so badly. 

When the examination was over it proved that 
but six of the eighty had passed "without condi- 
tions " ; that was the phrase then, as I think it is 
now. Rather to the disgust and mortification of 
the five best scholars of our Latin School class, 
they were all conditioned. They were the five 
highest of the six Franklin Medal boys, and a 
Franklin Medal is a type of the highest scholar- 
ship in a Boston school. Perkins, who was the 



172 A New England Boyhood 

sixth Franklin Medal boy, and I, who never had a 
Franklin Medal, were the two from our school who 
passed without any conditions. I am disposed, as 
I say, to think that to this accident — for it was a 
mere accident — I owed the suspicion which I 
entertained as early as that period of my life that 
all these examinations are in a large measure 
humbugs. The persistence in them is one of the 
follies of our time, which will drop out, as various 
other follies drop out, from one generation after 
another. It seems to belong where patches on a 
lady's face belong, or similar customs, which one 
age thinks important and another age laughs at. 
Of course I went home very light-hearted, not to 
say proud ; and from that day to this day I have 
never dreaded any of these formal functions, in 
whatever shape they have presented themselves. 
I am glad to think that my children have inherited 
something of the same light-hearted readiness to 
accept, without protest, any folly of the time, so it 
do not involve an essential principle. 

But when the business of actually going to 
college began I had none of this light-hearted 
feeling. It was all very pleasant to go around 
with Fullum to furniture stores, with money 
enough to buy the chairs, and carpet, and wash- 
bowl, and other apparatus with which one was to 
begin independent life. It was interesting to go 
out with him to 22 Stoughton, and assist in putting 
the carpet down, in hanging the curtains, and in 
determining where my desk should be, and where 



A New England Boyhood 173 

my brother's should be, and so in beginning upon 
housekeeping. But when all this was over, when 
I had been to morning prayers for the first time, 
and had gone through the routine of morning 
recitations, and the first recitation of the afternoon 
— recitations which were all child's play to boys 
who had been as well trained as we — when I sat 
in the broad window seat, and looked out on the 
setting sun, behind Mount Auburn, as it happened, 
then the bitterness of the situation revealed itself to 
me. I was thoroughly and completely homesick. 
I said to myself, perhaps I said aloud, " This is 
one day of three hundred and sixty-five, and that 
will make one year. At the end of that year I 
shall have gone through one of four such years." 
And I wondered how I ever could survive the 
deadly monotony of such a service. It was not 
till the next year that I read, in Miss Martineau's 
" Travels," that happy anecdote of the Jersey 
apprentice boy, who, when nine years old, was 
forever wishing for the Fourth of July. Someone 
asked him why he was so eager to have the Fourth 
of July come, and he said : " When that has come 
I shall have only eleven more years to serve." I 
repeat this tale of homesickness because, although 
it was an exaggerated feeling, it expresses well 
enough my dislike for the routine of college, a dis- 
like which accompanied me to its very close. 
Other fellows took the thing more simply and 
philosophically. Newton, of my own class, a fine 
fellow who died young, said to me once that he 



174 A New England Boyhood 

attended every chapel exercise, morning and even- 
ing through the whole time he was in Cambridge. 
"Why should I not? " he said. " I had not the 
attractions which you had in Boston ; Cambridge 
was my home. The rule was to be in chapel 
twice a day ; I might as well be there as anywhere 
else." He was undoubtedly the happier and, I 
think, the better man, because he could accept the 
routine of life with such good nature. 

As for the business which took us to college, 
more than half of us soon found out that we had 
been too well prepared. As Hayward used to say, 
" We had overrun the game." That is the great 
merit of the elective system, if it holds in the 
freshman year of a college — that a boy or young 
man can take hold where he is prepared to go for- 
ward. For us, however, we were set on reading 
Livy and Xenophon. These authors are easier 
after you have "the hang of it" than the Latin 
and Greek which we had been reading for some 
time before at school. We could almost read them 
at sight. Our teachers in these two languages 
regarded the whole thing as a bore ; they were 
preparing for other fields in life, and they had 
taken their tutorships by the way, without any 
idea that they were to interest us in language or 
that there was much interest in it; at least that 
is the impression which they left upon our minds. 
It was simply a dull school exercise. It may be 
said in passing that one of the great difficulties of 
our present college system comes from the fact 



A New England Boyhood J75 

that in general boys, for the last year they are in 
the preparatory school, have been under the care 
of a gentleman of spirit, and intelligence, and 
eagerness in education, who makes them his com- 
panions, who gives them such enthusiasm as he 
has in the studies which they are pursuing. For 
then they pass into the hand of some instructor 
who has just graduated, who does not know much, 
and very likely does not know how to teach what 
he knows. Thus, from a superior, picked man, 
one of the best educators in the country, perhaps, 
a boy passes under the direction of a frightened 
novice, with whom the college is trying an experi- 
ment whether he will or will not succeed. Of 
course, in theory, the best educators ought to have 
the charge of those pupils who need education 
most. But in practice, I fancy, it is very hard, in 
the charge of colleges, to make the professors of 
most ability take those elementary duties upon 
themselves. Certainly in very few colleges do 
they take any such duty. 

In the business of mathematics the whole thing 
was different. I find by the Quinquennial 
Catalogue that Professor Peirce, now well 
known as one of the most distinguished math- 
ematicians of the century, was appointed two 
years before this time as Hollis Professor of 
Mathematics. He was but twenty-six years of age. 
It has been the custom to say that he was not a 
good teacher of mathematics, because his insight 
was so absolute that he made one long step where 



ij6 A New England Boyhood 

a pupil needed to make four or five, and that he 
could not understand the difficulty of the boy who 
did not see what he saw. I suppose this is true; 
but, on the other hand, he was an enthusiast in 
his business, he was sympathetic and kind where 
he saw real interest in the pupil, and he devised 
the best method for the handling of a class which 
I have ever seen. In his case, certainly, there 
was no right to complain that an inferior teacher 
was put in charge of novices. At two o'clock in 
the afternoon we went into one of the large dining- 
rooms of University Hall, which was not needed 
for commons. As one went into the room he 
took from a pile of manuscript books his own 
book, as he had left it the day before. In this 
book he found a slip of paper with the problem 
of geometry which he was to work out that day. 
Now if he had failed the day before the problem 
given him would be one on the lesson of the day 
before ; if he had not failed it would take him on 
in the regular order. 

Of course it happened, before many weeks were 
over, that the different members of the class were 
in different places; but it also was sure, that 
nobody had been advanced any farther than he 
had understood what he was about. In point of 
fact, only six or eight members of the class went 
through without any failures at all, and the others 
straggled along in their places behind. If you 
had any real hitch, and did not understand the 
thing, you were encouraged in every way to sit 



A New England Boyhood 177 

down by Mr. Pcirce and work out the problem 
with him. We came to be, from that very 
moment forward, on terms of a certain sort of 
intimacy with him, which did not exist with five 
other teachers in college. He was very cordial 
and sympathetic, if anybody used his own brains 
enough to work out the problem in a way different 
from that in the book ; and I doubt if I have ever 
received any honor in life which I prized more 
than the words " excellent and original," which 
once or twice he wrote at the bottom of my 
exercise. Probably I hardly need say that this 
sort of intimacy led to a cordial friendship 
between him and me, which lasted till the very 
end of his distinguished life. 

But there is a queer thing about this recitation 
with him, which shows the absolute indifference 
of the American world of the first half of this 
century to matters of physical health. When, in 
the year before, Francis Lieber was intrusted with 
the preparation of the fundamental rules for 
Girard College, he prepared a curious code of 
such rules, in which he made this his Article 227: 

No scientific instruction proper should be given with- 
in a full hour after dinner. The contrary leads to vice. 

In utter indifference to any such rule as this — 
probably in utter ignorance that there was any 
connection between body and mind worth notice 
— our whole class was ordered into this math- 
ematical exercise at two o'clock, after we had 
12 



178 A New England Boyhood 

dined at a dinner beginning at one. It was not 
till five years afterwards that I stumbled on 
Lieber's axiom, which is based on absolute 
experience ; and I think one may doubt whether 
anybody at Cambridge cared whether there were 
any such axiom or not. Take, for another instance, 
the morning recitations. We went into chapel at 
six, to a perfunctory service which lasted rather less 
than ten minutes. Half the class then went at 
once into a recitation — whatever happened to be 
convenient — although breakfast was not to be 
served until twenty minutes past seven. All 
through the college year this same distance 
between breakfast and prayers prevailed ; what 
was called the " half-hour bell " being rung half 
an hour after prayers were over, so that some 
sections went in then, as some sections had gone 
in immediately on the close of chapel. The 
absolute wickedness of working the brains of boys 
who had taken no food perhaps since five o'clock 
in the afternoon before, did not seem to occur to 
a human being in the administration. 

My friend the late Dr. Muzzey, who was in 
college a dozen years before me, told me that, 
until he was a senior in college, nobody had ever 
told him that students ought to take physical 
exercise daily. He told me that he lived in the 
college yard, at work on his studies, day in and 
day out, without thinking that physical exercise 
was necessary for any reason, and that nobody 
told him that it was. It was not till he broke 



A New England Boyhood 179 

down, in a confirmed dyspepsia, from the results 
of which he suffered till the end of his days, that 
some physician explained to him that he ought 
to have taken some physical exercise every day 
of his life. It was true that Dr. John Ware, 
a person eminently fit for the duty, delivered 
lectures on the art of preserving health, to which 
we were obliged to go in our senior year. But 
the joke was that we did not go till our 
constitutions were destroyed. 

Through the freshman and sophomore years 
it was impossible for any boy of more than 
average training and sense to spend more than 
three hours a day in preparing for recitations. 
Lectures, observe, were almost wholly unknown 
in those years. Then the college required three 
hours of recitation, — on some rare occasion 
possibly four. Here were six hours taken up by 
studies of the university. Supposing you slept 
nine hours out of the twenty-four (and I certainly 
did) here were nine hours to be got rid of in 
amusement of whatever kind, where we were 
absolutely our own masters. The requisition was 
simply that we should attend these recitations and 
chapel twice a day. In the summer half of the 
year chapel was at six in the morning, as I have 
said. As the sun began to rise later than six, the 
chapel was pushed forward so that the exercises 
might be carried on by daylight, for it had been 
proved, by sad experience, that the under- 
graduates took measures to put out the candles 



i8o A New England Boyhood 

on which the chapel then depended for its light, 
if there were not light from the heavenly bodies. 
Given these requisitions, we might do as we chose 
for the rest of the time. 

For many of us — certainly for me — a consid- 
erable part of this time was used in the library. 
The library then consisted of about fifty thousand 
volumes, which occupied the second story of Har- 
vard Hall. With perhaps twenty exceptions every 
one of these books might be taken down by every 
comer and read, so only he remained in the library 
while reading. I think Mr. Emerson refers some- 
where to the facility thus given and to the use of 
it, as the best advantage which a college has to 
offer. I remember that there was a proposal made 
once that he should reside in Cambridge, with a col- 
lege appointment, as director of the reading of the 
undergraduates. Without any director or direc- 
tion we browsed over the whole range of English 
literature, and, when we could, dipped into other 
languages, I wonder, when I look back on the 
miscellaneous reading of those days, that even 
two or three hours a day gave time for it. But, 
practically, when you had nothing else to do 
between ten and four, you went into the library. 
You sat at the great table, where was Rees's 
Cyclopaedia, and you read the articles which you 
fancied or needed. You worked up your themes 
and forensics there. For me, I know I dipped 
through the Gentleman's Magazine, from 1720 
down. I remember reading the folios of adventure 



A New England Boyhood i 8 1 

on the North-west coast, so that ten years after- 
wards I was not unprepared for Sutter, the Sacra- 
mento, the wreck of the Peacock, and the dis- 
covery of gold. It had, in fact, been discovered 
by Shelvocke in 1718. 

For home reading, that is, reading in our rooms, 
we had the society libraries. All this has changed 
since you can buy a paper-covered novel for ten 
cents. The society assessments were not large — 
perhaps two dollars a year. For sixty members 
this gave an income of one hundred and twenty 
dollars, to be spent on the two-volume novel of 
the period, generally in Carey & Lea's Philadel- 
phia reprint. Cooper's later novels, James's novels, 
Mrs. Trollope's, Mrs. Gore's, and plenty more, of 
which names and authors are now forgotten, were 
regularly bought and ready for distribution at our 
mutual circulating libraries. The first of Dickens's 
came in my time, and Bulwer still held the field. 
I and my brother were entitled to four such novels 
a week — eight volumes. I doubt if I averaged 
more than four volumes a week. But I am sure I 
read as many as that, and I think they did me 
much more good than hurt. The novelists of 
that day did their best in conversation, and for 
ease in conversation I doubt if there is better 
training than the reading of good novels of that 
school. Of course we went back to the older 
books. Scott still reigned supreme. I knew 
Miss Austen by heart, almost, and we read every- 
thing else which the law of selection had preserved. 



1 82 A New England Boyhood 

The necessity of these Hbraries — a necessity 
which no longer exists — kept the hterary soci- 
eties alive. The clubs, like the Hasty Pudding 
and the Porcellian, were a different thing; they 
had their libraries also. 

The I. O. H. and the Institute were the fresh- 
man and sophomore societies — the Union and 
the Hasty Pudding came later. There was the 
slightest possible pretence of rivalry between the 
societies of the Institute and the I. O. H., but it 
amounted to nothing. In practice each society 
met once a fortnight, and the Tuesdays of meet- 
ings alternated with each other. In each society 
the exercises began with a lecture, so called, which 
lasted five or ten minutes. You had to get up 
some subject, and make it as interesting as you 
could, and read it to the assembled thirty or forty 
fellows. Then there was a debate, to which two 
or three speakers were assigned on the affirmative, 
and two or three on the negative. The fellows 
sat round the tables, which were built into the 
floor, for use when they should be needed in com- 
mons, and, after the regular speakers, anybody 
might join in the discussion. The discussions 
were of course as good and as bad as the discus- 
sions of boys generally are. But we were all 
trained by them to think on our feet, and all 
learned there to stand without our knees shaking 
under us, and that is the great thing to be learned. 
For the rest, if a man has anything to say he 
will be very apt to find out how to say it 



A New England Boyhood 183 

I am always sorry when I hear of any college 
that there is no interest in debating societies. 
Somehow or other you want to have Americans 
used to face an audience, and to tell the truth in 
as simple a way as it can be told ; and I know 
of no training so good for this as that of the 
debating club. I am glad to see that, under 
the auspices of the Lyceum League,^ there is a 
chance that the old-fashioned debating club may 
be revived. 

Once or twice a year there was a more formal 
function in society life. You celebrated Wash- 
ington's birthday, or something else which it was 
convenient to celebrate, by an oration and a 
poem. Then you invited the members of the 
other societies to come in. 

The Davy Club had been in existence some 
years, under one and another name, before my 
day, and had the north-east corner room in the 
basement of Massachusetts for a laboratory. Dr. 
Webster, who was the professor of chemistry, gave 
us the most good-natured and kindly assistance. 
Many a bit of old apparatus, for which substitutes 
had been found in the college laboratory, was 
transferred for our use; and we might, at any 
moment, run over to him for advice or informa- 
tion. We had quite a little store of chemicals, 
and, on the whole, the facilities of the Davy labo- 
ratory were so much better than those which we 
could concoct in our own wash basins and what 

1 Alas ! in 1S99 the Lyceum League also is a back number. 



1 84 A New England Boyhood 

were called the " studies " — the Httle closets by 
the sides of our chimney-places — that we ordi- 
narily stained our trousers and our fingers in that 
laboratory rather than in our own rooms. 

In my senior year a dramatic event crossed the 
deadly monotony of college life, which sent a knot 
of us into the laboratory for the whole of one 
Sunday. At morning chapel President Quincy, 
with a good deal of emotion, told us that break- 
fast at commons must be delayed a little while on 
account of an accident which had happened in the 
kitchen. It proved that two of the waiters had 
gone to sleep, in one of the rooms in the base- 
ment which was assigned for their bedroom, with 
a pan of charcoal burning. They had only been 
discovered just before the chapel service, and both 
of them were unconscious. At that moment the 
doctors were with them, hoping to re-arouse the 
vitality which was almost gone. When we came 
to breakfast a message came upstairs from this 
sick room, to know who there was at breakfast 
who could make oxygen. I ran down at once, 
and Dr. Wyman and Dr. Webster explained to me 
that they wanted to try the experiment of feeding 
the exhausted lungs with pure oxygen. When I 
found that it was not for immediate use only, but ' 
that the treatment was to be continued through 
the day, I told Dr. Webster that we should have to 
start the furnace in the Davy Club laboratory, and 
he bade me do so. With two or three others of 
the men most interested in chemistry I went up to 



A New England Boyhood 185 

that laboratory, and till ten o'clock in the even- 
ing we were sending down rubber bags of oxygen 
for these poor fellows to breathe. Whether it did 
them any good or not I do not know; eventually 
one of them recovered and the other died. 

I remember that our feet were wet through with 
the overflow of our pneumatic troughs; and, when 
we were notified that our work was needed no 
longer, I brought the whole crew up into my 
room in the third story of the same building to 
dry their feet and to take something warming 
within. We sat together for some time, and then 
they bade me good-night; but in two minutes one 
came rushing back for my water pails. It proved 
that the intense heat from our furnace, through the 
day, had cracked off the plaster in the chimney of 
old Massachusetts, and had exposed a timber 
which the careless builders of the year 1720 had 
only protected by rough-cast. Our fellows had 
prudently looked in at the laboratory as they 
went by, to see that all was safe, and had found 
themselves blinded with smoke. W^e went to work 
with a will to extinguish the fire we had lighted, 
but it was wholly shut in and was quite too much 
for us. That was the only night when I ever 
heard the traditional call of " Harvard." Some- 
one ran out and called " Harvard, Harvard, Har- 
vard ! " two or three times lustily, and in two 
minutes we had all Harvard to help us. But all 
would not do. We had to call in the Cambridge 
fire department, to our great shame and grief; 



1 86 A New England Boyhood 

and it was not till, with their axes, the firemen 
had cut away the chimney that we got at the 
beam to which we had set fire. Fortunately the 
old building was thus saved from destruction by 
the care of the men — Henry Parker is the one 
whom I remember — who looked in to see that 
all was safe after our day's work. 

Another of these out of the way dabblings in 
science was our observations for meteors in the 
winter of 1838-39. This was organized by Wil- 
liam Francis Channing, now so well known as an 
electrician. The New Haven astronomers had 
made the suggestion, which has since been gener- 
ally accepted, that on the 12th of November annu- 
ally the earth passes through a belt of meteors. 
Channing had had some conversation with Pro- 
fessor Lovering, who had told him that it was 
desirable that in November, 1838, there should 
be a careful observation on this subject; and we 
made a club of eight, which we called the Octag- 
onal Club, for the special purpose of making these 
observations. We sent a table and five chairs out 
to the Delta. We met there in a squad at mid- 
night and after, and, back to back, sat, all wrapped 
up, looking at the clear sky. We were quite in- 
credulous as to the " Novembreity " of the shower ; 
we said that there would be as many on any clear 
night; and we undertook to demonstrate it. So, 
month by month, that winter, when there was no 
moon, we met on the Delta in the same way to 
hunt for meteors. 



A New England Boyhood 187 

We have all been pleased since to see that 
those observations are referred to in the careful 
studies of this business. We certainly fixed the 
fact on the minds of the astronomers that on 
any fine winter night two or three hundred me- 
teors may be seen in our clear sky, if there 
are enough people to look for them. I doubt 
if this was generally believed before the interest 
aroused by the meteoric shower of November 
12, 1833. 

The recent observation, which seems to be now 
generally accepted, that there are black meteors, 
or moving bodies which reflect almost no light 
to our world, has recalled to me these nights of 
observation. There were three or four of us who 
insisted upon it that now and then we saw black 
meteors. The others, of course, said this was 
merely the reaction of the retina, and all that. 
But it was one of the jokes which found expres- 
sion in the little jingling poetry which among us 
we composed on those nights of observation : 

While Morison and Parker 
In south-east cry, " Marker, 
One jet black and darker 

From zenith above " ; 
But Adams and Longfellow, 
Watching the throng below, 
Won't all night long allow 

Black meteors move. 

I think it was in the Natural History Society 
however, that more of us were personally inter- 



i88 A New England Boyhood 

ested from day to day, than any other of these 
outside occupations. In imitation of the Davy 
Club we applied very early for one of the recita- 
tion rooms in the basement of Massachusetts, 
which the government cordially gave us, because 
they liked to help in such plans. Eventually we 
occupied all four of those rooms between the two 
entries. The whole basement is now given up to 
a large lecture room, the same which is used by 
the Phi Beta Kappa at its annual dinners. We 
were as poor as rats, and why we did not ask the 
college to furnish these rooms for us I am sure I 
do not know; I do not doubt they would have 
done it willingly. But we assessed ourselves terri- 
bly for the cases in which we were to keep our 
collections. And half my recollections of the 
Natural History Society are not of botany or 
mineralogy, but of bargains with carpenters and 
painters and other people who were to work for 
us in such details. I remember, on one occasion, 
we were very anxious to have the new rooms ready 
for a college exhibition, but two days beforehand 
the painters had not come. When they came I 
stood over them and made them promise that the 
paint should be dry by nine o'clock the next 
morning. They explained to me that if enough 
turpentine were used it would certainly be dry, 
and dry it was ; but whether the fair friends whom 
we took to see our exhibition enjoyed the smell 
of the turpentine I have always since doubted. 
And thus I am reminded that I have said noth- 



A New England Boyhood 189 

ing about college exhibitions. They have died out 
in the face of the pressure of modern life, I think 
from the difficulty that it was impossible to secure 
an audience. Probably the great festivity of class 
day takes the place of all such minor festivities. 
But in these prehistoric times of which I write the 
minor festivities held their own, and at the three 
exhibitions and at commencement there were large 
parties of ladies and gentlemen who visited the 
college, and who were entertained with more or 
less festivity. Exhibitions were divided into junior 
and senior exhibitions. This meant that the high- 
est part in the junior exhibition was taken by the 
highest junior, while in the two senior exhibitions 
the highest parts were taken by the second and 
third seniors. This shall be explained more fully 
hereafter. 

Now, as will appear, if you were in the upper 
twenty-four of the class you spoke twice before 
commencement came, and at commencement you 
had another part — oration, dissertation, disquisi- 
tion, or a Latin or Greek part, according to your 
ability. So much was matter of college regula- 
tion; but the custom was that men who spoke 
invited their friends out to hear them, and as there 
were sixteen speakers at each exhibition, this made 
a company of two or three hundred ladies and 
gentlemen, who came out to " see the colleges " 
on those particular days. On those days there 
were no other college exercises ; generally the 
Pierian was in attendance, and they made pretty 



190 A New England Boyhood 

fetes on a small scale, as class day makes one of 
the grandest events of the year now. If you had 
a part you rehearsed for it, of course, with the 
teacher of elocution. What was quite as impor- 
tant, you went down to see Ma'am Hyde, who had 
a little shop on Dunster Street, and you hired your 
silk gown. You paid her fifty cents for a day's use 
of it. She had enough of these gowns to answer 
for the whole class, and unless a boy was the son 
of a clergyman, or otherwise connected with a 
good silk gown, he hired one of these for use. 
They were very sleazy silk, and certainly would 
not stand alone, but they answered the purpose. 

The exhibition itself began with a Latin saluta- 
tory, in which you said civil things about the pretty 
girls, and thanked the professors and the president 
for their kindness to you. Then went on discus- 
sions and dissertations and dialogues and one " Ora- 
tion." And after every four or five numbers there 
would be " music by the Pierian Sodality." While 
the music went on you walked around and talked 
with your pretty friends, or your uncles, or your 
aunts, and invited them to the spread at your own 
room; but the word "spread" was not then in- 
vented. So the sixteen numbers pulled through, 
every speaker bowing to the president and then to 
the audience, making his speech, bowing again, 
and retiring. There were certain " silent parts," 
us they were called, because the mathematical and 
chemical departments wanted to show who were 
their best men, irrespective of general college 



A New England Boyhood 191 

rank. These were assigned to three or four men, 
who wrote them out and tied them up in rolls with 
highly colored ribbon, and when their time came 
marched across the stage, made a bow to the 
presiding officer, gave the roll to him, made 
another bow to the president, and again retired. 

This will be as good a place as any to tell the 
varying fortunes of class day itself, of which I 
happen to remember one of the most important 
crises. Class day seems to have originated as 
early as the beginning of the century. The class 
itself chose a favorite speaker as orator, and some- 
one who could write a poem, and had its own 
exercises of farewell. There grew up side by side 
with those farewell exercises the custom by which 
the class treated the rest of the college, and event- 
ually treated every loafer in Cambridge. As I 
remember the first class days which I ever saw, 
they were the occasions of the worst drunkenness 
I have ever known. The night before class day 
some of the seniors — I do not know but what all 
— went out to the lower part of the yard, where 
there was still a grove of trees, and " consecrated 
the grove," as the phrase was, which meant drank 
all the rum and other spirits that they liked. Then, 
on the afternoon of class day, around the old elm 
tree, sometimes called Rebellion Tree and some- 
times Liberty Tree, which stood and stands behind 
Hollis, all the college assembled, and every other 
male loafer who chose to come where there was a 
free treat. Pails of punch, made from every spirit 



192 A New England Boyhood 

known to the Cambridge innkeepers, were there for 
everybody to drink. It was a horrid orgy from end 
to end, varied, perhaps, by dancing round the tree. 
With such memories of class day President 
Quincy, in 1838, sent for my brother and one or 
two others of the class of that year in whom he 
had confidence, to ask what could be done to 
break up such orgies. He knew he could rely on 
the class for an" improvement in the customs. 
They told him that if he would give them for the 
day the use of the Brigade Band, which was then 
the best band we had in Boston, and which they 
had engaged for the morning, they felt sure that 
they could change the fete. The conditions, 
observe, were a lovely July day, the presence in 
the morning at the chapel, to hear the addresses, 
of the nicest and prettiest girls of Boston and 
neighborhood with their mammas, and the chances 
of keeping them there through the afternoon. 
Mr. Ouincy gladly promised the band, and when 
the day came, it became the birthday of the 
modern " class day," the most charming of fetes. 
Word was given to the girls that they must come 
to spend the day. In the chapel Coolidge deliv- 
ered a farewell oration. Lowell, alas ! was at 
Concord, not permitted to come to Cambridge to 
recite his poem; it had to be printed instead. 
When the ode had been sung the assembly moved 
up to that shaded corner between Stoughton and 
Holworthy. The band people stationed them- 
selves in the entry of Stoughton, between 21 and 



A New England Boyhood 193 

24, with the window open, and the " dancing on 
the green," of which there are still traditions, 
began. The wind instrument men said afterward 
that they never played for dancing before, and 
that their throats were bone dry; and I suppose 
there was no girl there who had ever before 
danced to the music of a trombone. When our 
class came along, in 1839, we had the honor of 
introducing fiddles. I shall send this paper to 
the charming lady — the belle of her time — with 
whom I danced in the silk gown in which I had 
been clad when I delivered the class poem of my 
year. Docs she remember it as well as I do? 

Commencement was a function far more impor- 
tant than the exhibitions or than class day, which, 
to speak profanely, were side shows. No audi- 
ence can ever be persuaded to sit six hours or 
more to hear perhaps thirty addresses. So now, 
wdiile a certain theory is maintained that certain 
of the best scholars in the large graduating class 
prepare addresses, by far the larger number of 
them are excused, and only five or six speakers, 
representing four or five branches of the univer- 
sity, actually address the audience. No one has 
to be in the theatre more than two hours. 

But in the first half of the century the function 
consumed the day. People had more time, and, 
with a certain ebb and flow of the assembly of 
auditors, the First Church was kept full all day. 
Originally there was a recess in the middle of the 
day for dinner, I think, but of this I am not sure. 

13 



194 ^ New England Boyhood 

In our day about twenty-five of the graduating 
class spoke, and tliere were one or two addresses 
by speakers who represented the " Masters," that 
is, those who took tlieir second degree, three years 
after they graduated. 

A " Master" might have fifteen minutes, I think, 
Tlie three seniors who had " orations," that is, the 
liighest scholars in the graduating class, had ten 
minutes. In order of rank there followed disserta- 
tions, disquisitions, and, if anybody could write 
verse, a poem. A dissertation was eight minutes 
long, and a disquisition four. Of all this you were 
notified when you were appointed. 

My sophomore year began at the time when the 
high consulting powers had determined to cele- 
brate the second centennial of the college. It was 
two hundred years since the granting of the 
charter, and that was, fairly enough, taken as the 
birthday. 

Preparations were made to illuminate the build- 
ings, and a great tent, in which two thousand 
people might dine, was pitched near where Presi- 
dent Eliot's house now stands. The president's 
house then was what we now call " Wadsworth," 
the house built for Benjamin Wadsworth by the 
province when he came from the First Church in 
Boston to be president of the college in 1726. 
Students would not be students if they did not 
connect some utter absurdity with every function ; 
accordingly there was circulated among us a 
rumor, for which there was not the slighest founda- 



A New England Boyhood 195 

tion, that, in revenge for the burning of the Ursu- 
line convent two years before, the Irish of Boston 
proposed to attack the college and destroy the 
illuminations the night before the celebration. To 
prepare for this attack the undergraduates met, 
and chose their officers for a night watch to pro- 
tect the university. We took our turns as patrols 
all round the college yards, challenging every 
poor night wanderer who passed, and making him 
give the countersign. If he did not know it we 
bid him pass, and thanked God we were rid of a 
knave. It was, of course, an admirable prepara- 
tion, worthy of our years, for a very fatiguing day 
of festival, thus to knock out three or four hours 
of sleep from the night before. The military com- 
pany, called the Harvard Washington Corps, 

" The hybrid band of Mercury and Mars," 

had been extinct for some years, but there lin- 
gered still, as " transmittenda," a few guns, sashes, 
and belts, with a sword or two, which served for 
the equipment of our officers. I doubt if there 
were a pound of powder among us all; certainly 
not a bullet, flint, or percussion cap. 

President Quincy delivered a historical address 
at this celebration which makes the opening chap- 
ter of his " History." I think it was on this occa- 
sion that the old motto " Veritas " was first drawn 
out from a manuscript record and used across the 
face of the three open books which are the bear- 
ing on the college seal. 



196 A New England Boyhood 

At the dinner Mr. Webster, Mr. Everett, and 
Judge Shaw spoke, and I had, for the first time, 
the joy of hearing Wendell Holmes recite his own 
verses : 

" Lord ! how the seniors kicked about 
That freshman class of one." 

Perfect as they are to the reader, they are more 
than perfect when he stands on a bench at a col- 
lege dinner and, with all his overflow of humor, of 
pathos, and of eloquence, recites them. Of how 
many Phi Beta dinners has he been the joy and 
crown ! It is the first business of a Phi Beta presi- 
dent to make Dr. Holmes say he will come to the 
annual dinner, and the next is to catch any other 
celebrity who may have been a guest at com- 
mencement. Phi Beta is so free and easy that 
it is at that table that the brightest things are said. 
I remember to have heard there Lord Dufi'erin, 
Lord Ashburton, and Sir Edward Thornton among 
the travellers, and of our home orators Mr. Everett, 
Mr. Sumner, Mr. Hillard, Mr. Emerson, all the 
Ouincys — yes, and so many more. 

All this gossip implies that we were kept alive 
and in motion for four years, but I have not told 
how the machine was fed and oiled. In earlier 
days every student ate his breakfast and supper in 
his room, taking " a size " from the buttery, and 
dining in commons. But we took all three meals 
in commons or at some private boarding-house. 



A New England Boyhood 197 

University Hall had been built twenty-seven 
years before, for the general purpose of chapel, 
commons, and for providing reading-rooms. It 
was then supposed that one of the four large halls 
which crossed the building on the first floor would 
be used by each class in commons. But when I 
was in college only two halls were thus used ; the 
two at the ends of the building, and the middle 
dining halls, as they were called, were reserved for 
large recitation rooms. It was in one of these that 
we recited to Mr. Peirce. As freshmen we all met 
for meals in the northern hall with the juniors. 
About half the undergraduates at that time lived 
in commons. Looking back on the fare which was 
served us I am rather surprised that they were able 
to do so much for us as they did, and do it so well. 
The bill of fare appears rather Spartan to young 
men of the habits of most of the young men who 
meet in Cambridge to-day. But the quality of our 
food was always good, and the quantity was such 
as would have satisfied a savage of the plains. I 
remember to have observed that I lost weight in 
vacations and gained weight during the months of 
term time. 

The tables were firmly fixed into the floor, as if 
in memory of some time when, in rage, the guests 
had turned the tables up and flung them out of the 
window. We went to commons three times a day, 
the custom of men serving their own breakfasts 
and suppers in their own rooms having been given 
up not many years before. The buttery, as it was 



198 A New England Boyhood 

called, used to be at the east end of Harvard Hall, 
where a slight trace of the roof of that temporary- 
building may, I think, still be seen ; but in our days 
there was no buttery, and it was not necessary for 
any person to cook in his room. Everything which 
we really needed was provided for us at commons. 
Eighty minutes after the morning prayer bell 
stopped we were rung in to breakfast. The break- 
fast was coffee or milk ad libitum, hot and cold 
bread, and butter. I think no meat was served at 
breakfast. We knew what would be the variety of 
the hot bread ; it was made in different rolls or 
biscuits for difterent days, and the order was never 
changed. Dinner was at one, and always consisted 
of one sort of meat, potatoes, and something called 
pudding. Here, again, the bill of fare was as ab- 
solute as if it had been laid down by the Medes and 
Persians, and never changed. I think it is burned 
in on my memory so that, to this day, when cer- 
tain provisions appear on certain days of the week, 
I take it as something preordained. For meats, 
Sunday was roast beef, Monday was corned beef, 
Tuesday was roast veal, Wednesday was beefsteak, 
Thursday was roast lamb or mutton, Friday meat- 
pie with fish, Saturday was salt fish. I think we 
never had pork in any form, either fresh or in 
the shape of ham. To make the Friday dinner 
more substantial meat-pie was added ; I suppose 
a house-keeper would tell us that it was made out 
of such meat as had not been eaten in the preced- 
ing days. We remember it because after eating 



A New England Boyhood 199 

this solid meat-pie we went to our rooms to write 
our Friday themes. The puddings were boiled 
rice, baked rice, hasty pudding, baked Indian pud- 
ding, apple pudding, and, on one day, some sort 
of pie took the place of pudding. Every now and 
then there would be a complaint that the butter 
was bad ; in that case we did not stand it. Some- 
body went right round to the president and told 
him, and he sent for the contractor and gave him 
a blowing up. We always pretended at home and 
elsewhere that the fare was not good, but it was 
good. 

Now the wonder to me is that they managed to 
feed a set of ravenous wolves — for that is what 
we were — on such a bill of fare, at the prices at 
which food was then sold in Eastern Massachusetts, 
Flour ranged in those years from $4.90 a barrel to 
$11.50, But we paid only $1.90 a week for our 
board in the first year when I was in college, and 
$2.25, for every year afterwards. It must be 
remembered that this charge involved for the con- 
tractor no expenses for crockery, silver, knives and 
forks, rent, or fuel. The college had these to see to. 

The table at which I sat became, in fact, a club 
table ; we were the same little company from the 
beginning to the end of our college life. While 
we were in college Dickens's books began to 
appear, and we made it a rule that the table 
should buy the serial parts for its own use ; one 
man bought the first number, the next man the 
second, and we passed them round. We intro- 



200 A New England Boyhood 

duced into commons the institution of salt-spoons. 
Up to our time every man put his knife into the 
salt-cellar; but we subscribed twenty-five cents 
and bought two salt-spoons made of bone, which 
we used through our college course. It was agreed 
that they should be given to the man who was first 
married. Six years after, our excellent friend 
Watson of Plymouth was married, and we sent 
him the salt-spoons, set in silver in a careful design 
made by Richard Greenough, who was the friend of 
all of us. Longfellow and I were intrusted with 
the business of mounting the salt-spoons, and we 
did so. The inscription was from Lucian, sug- 
gested by Longfellow: "'AXcov eKOLvoivov/xev" — 
" We have shared each other's salt." 

It is a little unsentimental, perhaps, to have 
spent so much space on the physical business of 
feeding the engines. Still it must be confessed 
that in all human life armies have to be fed, and 
even the future poets, philosophers, statesmen, 
and men of affairs of a country have to be fed for 
the same reasons. In point of fact, we were a 
healthy and a happy race. I have said, I believe, 
almost nothing about our athletic amusements ; 
but there were enough of them, although they 
were conducted with utter lack of system, and 
would bring scorn, I suppose, on any one of us, 
or any eleven, who should reproduce them to-day. 
We had foot-ball in tumultuous throngs; we had 
base-ball, in utter ignorance that there were ever 
to be written rules for base-ball, or organized clubs 



A New England Boyhood 201 

for playing it ; and we had cricket, in a way. So 
we wrought through the four years, which for me 
were, as I have said, tedious, as I had expected 
they would be. But every one of us made friends 
to whom he has clung through life, and we got an 
outlook into a larger world, even if we did not 
look into the largest. The jest with regard to 
Cambridge is that nobody who lives in Cambridge 
knows anything five miles from the sound of the 
college bell. This is not true now, and it was not 
any more true then ; we acquainted ourselves with 
friends from all parts of the United States ; we 
got broader views of politics and society than 
those we had picked up at home ; and we certainly 
left college willing to do our duty. 

The great functions of college life which attract 
the outside world are now in the hands of the 
students. They are the boat races, or the ball 
matches, or the other athletic " events " ; or they 
are, perhaps, the theatrical performances of the 
Hasty Pudding, the concerts of the glee clubs, or 
the great annual festival of class day. In our 
time this was hardly so ; when strangers came to 
college they came at the invitation of the govern- 
ment. There were three annual exhibitions, and 
commencement day was still the great festival of 
all. The exhibitions, as I have said, were arranged 
with deference to precedent and with mathemat- 
ical care, so that you might know what was 
the precise grade of scholarship to which each 
student had attained, if he only belonged to the 



202 A New England Boyhood 

"upper half" of the class. "Upper half" was 
not a strictly accurate expression, but was suffi- 
ciently so to include the twenty-four men who had 
had the highest rank on the numerical scale to 
which everything bent. In this scale every person 
was marked for every recitation. If you made a 
perfect recitation your mark was 8 ; if you 
" deaded," as the phrase was — that is, if you 
failed absolutely — the mark was o; and the mark 
took any figure between, according as the teacher 
thought you were well prepared. For certain 
exercises the mark was higher; for instance, a 
perfect theme, such as Longfellow used to write, 
was marked 48, and a theme might bear any mark 
below. Of these marks a great total was kept. 
If you were absent from any recitation, eight was 
deducted from your total. If you were absent 
from chapel I think two was deducted; every 
offence and every success had its correlative 
weight on this absolute standard. 

I used to say, and it was quite true, that if 
a man entered college perfectly well fitted, so 
that at his first recitation he received 8 for every 
exercise, and from that moment declined in morals, 
in scholarship, and in intelligence, so that at his 
last recitation he received o for everything, his 
rank on the college scale the day he graduated 
would be absolutely the same as that of some un- 
fortunate who, having got into the college by 
mistake, received o for every mark on his first 
recitation, and then by assiduous study, virtue. 



A New England Boyhood 203 

and intelligence rose so that at the end of his 
course he received the highest mark for e\'ery- 
thing, and was the best scholar in his class. This 
statement was absolutely correct. The rank list, 
so called, of all colleges simply gives a miserable 
average of what a person has been in a certain 
period of time, and does not reveal, to men or to 
angels, anything of his present capacity or his 
present wish and intention. 

By such a rank list, however, we were all meas- 
ured. I think the result was a very great indiffer- 
ence to college rank on the part of most of the 
students. But in the bosoms of our families there 
was a great respect for it ; everybody knew who the 
first scholar was, and there were traditions of the 
first scholars of a hundred years before us, so that 
a certain interest attached to knowing who the first 
scholar was. This interest was met in our case, and 
it would have been in the case of all other classes 
of our time, when what was called the sophomore 
exhibition, which has been already alluded to, came 
on. With us it was at the end of the college year 
of 1836-37. On a certain morning in May eight 
of our fellows were sent for to go to the president. 
They had little slips of paper given them, telling 
them what parts were assigned them for the exhi- 
bition, which was to take place just before the end 
of the college year. These parts were translations 
into Latin and Greek, or from Latin and Greek 
into English ; but these eight then knew that they 
were the eight highest scholars in our class. For 



204 A New England Boyhood 

the same exhibition one English oration was as- 
signed, with which the exhibition closed. The 
junior who received this part knew that he was 
the highest scholar in his class then; unless he 
failed badly in the next year this man would be 
sure to receive the highest honor at commence- 
ment. 

There were, as I have said, three of these exhibi- 
tions in a year, and at each exhibition eight of one 
class and eight of another were appointed, making 
sixteen in all. The exhibition consisted of declaim- 
ing these parts, of which the half were translations 
and half were original, in English, Latin, or Greek, 
before such an audience as chose to come together. 
Most of the students were at that time from the 
eastern part of Massachusetts ; it would therefore 
happen that sixteen students might call together 
two or three hundred of their friends to hear their 
performances on such occasions. You spoke, in 
black silk gown, for four minutes, for six minutes, 
for eight minutes, or for twelve, according to your 
rank; you delivered a poem, or a disquisition, or 
a dissertation, or an oration, or you had your part 
in a " forensic, " or perhaps simply declaimed in a 
dialogue which you had translated from some 
English drama into Greek or Latin. After the 
exhibition you asked your friends to your room, 
where there was a modest entertainment provided ; 
the word " spread " is now used for such enter- 
tainments, but that has come in since my time. 

At the end of the whole business, when your 



A New England Boyhood 205 

boyhood was all but over, and your manhood was 
about to begin, the college commencement ended 
the whole. Still it was rightly enough named, for 
it was the beginning of life. To prepare for this 
the president's freshman carried round, not sixteen 
notes, but twenty-four or more, to call to the pres- 
ident's study the seniors who were highest in rank 
of the class which was to graduate. They were to 
receive their bachelor's degree. You went round to 
the president, and he gave you a slip of paper : — 

"Jones, a disquisition, four minutes"; 
or, 

" Smith, an English dissertation, eight minutes" ; 
or, 

" Brown, an English oration, twelve minutes." 
Then you had the summer term to get up this 
part. You carried it down to Mr. Channing, who 
struck out its exuberant rhetoric, you rehearsed it 
to the teacher of elocution, you hired your black 
silk gown of Mrs. Hyde, and all was ready. The 
morning of commencement, before daylight, there 
began a queer procession from Boston of people, 
who were generally black people, with little 
covered handcarts or other vehicles, with which 
they established themselves around the Cambridge 
Common to feed the thirst and the hunger of the 
loafers of that town. With them and theirs, how- 
ever, students had little or nothing to do. But, 
for the multitude of Cambridge, commencement 
was thus made much more a public holiday than 
was any other day in the year. 



2o6 A New England Boyhood 

At eight o'clock in the morning the Governor 
rode out from the State House in a barouche with 
an escort of cavalry; the officers and the corpora- 
tion rendered themselves ; and at the First Church, 
which had been fitted up with a platform, the 
exercises began at nine o'clock. Lucky was the 
class and lucky were the spectators if they were 
done at half-past three in the afternoon. Perhaps 
one or two speakers had been added to the twenty- 
four who had had parts at exhibitions. It was 
generally considered that, out of respect to the nine 
Muses, if you had a poet of marked excellence in 
the class, he had a part whether he had or had 
not earned it by being one of the first twenty-four. 
Some fellow who wrote Latin decently well made 
a Latin salutatory. He said something funny 
about the girls, he complimented the professors, 
and told the Governor that all men considered 
themselves fortunate that the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts was under his direction. Then in 
stages of four or five parts at a time you went for- 
ward and satisfied yourself whether Alexander 
the Great were or were not a robber, whether 
literature would or would not flourish in America, 
and whether Julius Caesar or Napoleon were the 
greater general. For glimpses of relief, as these 
numbers flowed on, the band performed some 
music, and people who could not stand it any 
longer then got up and went out, and people who 
had been waiting outside came in. So the exer- 
cises flowed on in a steady stream till, as I say. 



A New England Boyhood 207 

between three and four o'clock, when the president 
was ready to give the degrees. He gave the 
bachelor's degree to these youngsters who had 
been speaking the pieces and to the rest of the 
class. The classes, on an average, were about 
sixty at that time. Then he called up those who 
were to be admitted as Masters. This was simply 
a file of such of the graduates of three years 
before as chose to pay the fee for another diploma. 
All the same, they were represented in the speak- 
ing by someone who delivered what was known 
as "the Master's oration." It was rather longer 
than the other orations, and was supposed to be 
more manly. 

I may say in passing that I think the only trib- 
ute to college rank which I have ever known con- 
ferred by this active world of America was in 
connection with one of these Masters' orations. 
A man whom I knew rather well when I was in 
college had the Master's oration of his year. Ten 
years afterwards, as it happened, he was in a dis- 
tant city, where, he told me, he had gone to see 
the lady whom he was afterwards to marry. 
Rather to his surprise, he found himself quartered 
in his hotel in what was known as the " Governor's 
room," a handsome parlor on the first floor, with 
all the conveniences of bedroom on one side, a 
bathroom, and the rest, such as in those days were 
not often dispensed in a travellers' hotel. When 
he paid his bill he asked to what accident he owed 
this distinction. And the " gentlemanly clerk" at 



2o8 A New England Boyhood 

the office said : " I heard you speak your Master's 
oration at Cambridge ten years ago." So it seems 
that feudal institutions did linger in America 
almost as late as the middle of this century, and 
that the men of the carnal world had still some 
honors to confer on those who had in any sort 
been favored by the Muses. 

And with this distribution of degrees college 
life ended. The degree is in Latin, and it does 
not promise much. It does give you the privilege 
of speaking in public whenever anybody asks you 
to. This privilege is one apt to be claimed by the 
American boy or the American man when he has 
not studied in a university. That is to say, any 
man may " hire a hall." There is, perhaps, a sat- 
isfaction in being authorized to do so in a lan- 
guage which few people understand, by a body of 
men who have received from the commonwealth 
the right to give such authority. However that 
may be, it is quite true that at the moment when 
one receives a piece of parchment which gives 
him this privilege his boyhood may be said to end 
and his manhood to begin. 



SIXTY YEARS OF MY LIFE 
WANDERJAHRE 



14 



WANDERJAHRE 

[Biographical Note. The memoranda — such as they are, 
— in the "New England Boyhood" end before boyhood is gen- 
erally thought to end. I was seventeen years and five months 
old when I received my bachelor's degree. Our first scholar, 
Samuel Eliot, — so honorably connected with the higher education 
of New England and with its noblest charities, — was but little 
older. But what is written is written. I make no attempt, in 
the summer of 1899, to recast the papers which I have collected 
as a sort of supplement to the little book which makes the first 
half of this volume. The greater part of them have been printed 
in one or another journal, — and in sending them to the press I 
have made such explanations as will prove, I hope, sufficient. — 
E. E. H.] 

There is no more interesting writing than auto- 
biography, — for the person who whites it. You 
might test the same man, at intervals of two or 
three years, after he had passed sixty : set him to 
writing his autobiography, and each record should 
be quite different from that of the time before. 

In the case of " A New England Boyhood," my 
experience was perhaps unusual. At Mr. Horace 
Scudder's request, I wrote several numbers for the 
Atlantic Monthly; they were suggested, as has 
been said, by Miss Larcom's admirable book, " A 
New England Girlhood," and I should be glad if 
I thought they had anything of the charm of that 



2 1 2 Sixty Years 

volume. I " padded " them afterward, to use the 
phrase of the ungodly, to make a separate book 
of them, which was to be published by the Cassell 
Company, of New York City. 

Unfortunately for me, — shall I say, for the world? 
— on the day on which the book was to go out 
for the instruction of mankind, the principal 
director in that New York firm departed for parts 
unknown, where he has never since been identified, 
and carried such funds as were available for pur- 
poses of publication. I have a right to say, there- 
fore, that that book, until this year, has never 
been published, and whatever advantages it might 
have brought to a waiting world have never been 
developed. 

It ends, a little abruptly, with the end of college 
life. How well I can recollect that hour when I 
found myself in my pretty attic study in my father's 
house in Franklin Street, when I had arranged my 
few books there and looked forward upon life ! I 
said to myself, " This is the last vacation which I 
shall ever enjoy." I had already agreed that early 
in September I would enter the service of the 
city of Boston as what we still call an " usher " in 
the Boston Latin School, the school in which I 
had myself been trained. I had delivered on class 
day at Cambridge the class poem ; I had six weeks 
before me in which to prepare an " oration," which 
I was to deliver on commencement day. I had 
these six weeks before me, and with the forecast of 
a prophet I said to myself, " I shall not be a free 



Wanderjahre 2 1 3 

man again in my life." Sixty years have passed, 
and it is not until the month in which I write 
these lines, that I have come back to that happy 
freedom, 

I had not been long installed in my home 
quarters when my uncle, Alexander Hill Everett, 
who was always kindness itself to me, was sent to 
China as United States minister. He permitted 
me to have the use of his personal library for the 
years of his absence ; and with a good deal of diffi- 
culty I placed this collection of books on shelves 
in different parts of my father's house. My own 
bedroom was fairly walled with books. These 
were the collections which Mr. Everett had made 
between the years 1S06 and 1840, mostly in his 
diplomatic residences in Russia, in the Nether- 
lands, in France, and in Spain. I think it worth 
while to speak of this piece of good fortune because 
my life, absolutely in the midst of such books, was 
for many years largely influenced by them. The 
daily use of such a collection brought me into 
touch with the studies of the century, particularly 
in the years just before my time. I had begun on 
the line of reading which for many years I followed 
by reading through the English Annual Register 
from the year 18 16 to the year 1835 ; for I had al- 
ready observed that for any man the most difficult 
period for the study of history is the generation 
immediately preceding his personal recollection. 
Those twenty years of Annual Register annals 
were a good webwork in which to embroider 



214 Sixty Years 

what I found among the German, French, and 
Spanish writers to whom I had easy access through 
Mr, Everett's kindness. In the same years the 
Champollions, Rossellini, and Lepsius were at 
work on the Egyptian hieroglyphics. I dabbled 
a good deal in that matter, and, like the other 
men of my time, was of course interested in the 
studies, comparatively new, which we now call 
studies of comparative religion, — this phrase had 
not then been invented. 

My first articles for the periodicals were written 
at this time. I had a few articles in the North 
Americaji, a good many in my father's and my 
brother's journals, and was much pleased when 
Dr. Gannett inserted an anonymous article from 
my pen in the Christian Examiner. Of that jour- 
nal I was afterwards one of the assistant editors. 

For two years I did my best in teaching Latin 
in the Latin School, serving under Epes Sargent 
Dixwell, who was the head of that school, and 
Francis Gardner, who was the " sub-master." It 
is a pleasure to write down the names of these two 
men. The elder of them is still living, honorable 
and honored. The loyalty with which he sustained 
his subordinates in every issue and in every diffi- 
culty entitled him always to their regard. 

At the end of these two years I resigned. I 
resigned because I found I was often, at night, 
dreaming of my duties. I said that I was willing 
to give the city of Boston my days, but I would 
not give to it my nights. But, as I have found, it 



Wanderjahre 215 

was life I was quarrelling with. For never since 
have I been engaged in any duty of long continu- 
ance, where the work was worth the doing, but I 
have dreamed of it by night as I have thought of 
it by day. 

So soon as I broke off in 1841, I joined my 
college friend William Francis Channing as junior 
assistant in the geological survey of New Hamp- 
shire. Returning from this, I lived at home, 
following up with a certain vigor the studies to 
which my teachers directed mc, in the way of 
preparing for the Christian ministry. 

I do not remember the time in my life when I did 
not suppose that I was to enter on that noble ser- 
vice. My study in this direction was now directed 
by my own minister, Samuel Kirkland Lothrop, 
and his predecessor John Gorham Palfrey, men to 
whom I was then and am still very largely indebted. 
At the same time, for the three years 1840, 1841, 
1842, my father was publishing the Monthly 
Chronicle ; in 1842 my brother was editing the 
Boston Miscellanj ; my father and my brothers 
were editors of the Daily Advertiser; and, from 
1 84 1 to 1846, my life was largely mixed up with 
editorial and newspaper duties. I wrote short- 
hand badly, and I often worked on the staff of the 
Advertiser. I remember especially that I did my 
share when we reported the speeches at the com- 
pletion of Bunker Hill Monument, when Mr. 
Choate delivered his eulogy on General Harrison, 
when Mr. Webster made what was called his great 



2i6 Sixty Years 

Faneuil Hall speech of September, 1842. To my 
great regret through my life, by a mere accident I 
furnished the report of his unhappy speech to a 
crowd of people around the Revere House, when 
he said, " Massachusetts must conquer her preju- 
dices." But for the misfortune that I was there, 
those words would not now be preserved to the 
world. 

Any average doctor of divinity would say that 
this was a very preposterous course of preparation 
for the modern pulpit. For the general drift of 
modern habit in America almost compels young 
men of college training to follow up that training 
by three years more of scholastic life at a theo- 
logical school, if they mean to be preachers. But 
perhaps they are exactly the persons who need to 
look at life more in its active relations. However 
this may be, I have often said that the six months 
of training for my profession, which have proved 
of most value to me, were spent as the hard-work- 
ing private secretary of my father, when he was 
engaged in Pennsylvania in important work re- 
garding the railroads and canals, bearing on the 
resumption of payment on the interest on the 
Pennsylvania debt. My note-books of that time 
show the oddest intermingling of notes on the 
strength of wire cables, of memoranda on Ammon- 
Ra and Thoth, of accounts of visits to prisons, 
and the briefs of newspaper articles on taxation. 
I think that the man who is to preach to men of 
affairs must live among them, read what they 



Wanderjahre 2 1 7 

read and, to a certain extent, know what they 
know. 

In October, 1842, I received a "license to 
preach." This is the old-time phrase of the 
Congregational order in Massachusetts. From 
that time till April, 1846, I used to go to preach 
wherever I was sent, always making the proviso 
that I did not choose to be permanently settled. 
This gave me a nomad life, from which I am sure 
I profited. In those years I preached in North- 
ampton, in Greenfield, in Albany, in Cambridge, 
in Washington, and in New Bedford. 

The winter which I spent in Washington was 
the Texas winter, — the winter of 1844-5. I 
came into Washington early, of a Sunday morn- 
ing, by the B. and O. train, having an engagement 
to preach on that day. I had lost my connections 
at Baltimore, or I should have arrived the night 
before. Unfortunately, I had lost my elegant 
stov^e-pipe hat also, the day before, in the 
Northern Canal of Pennsylvania, just outside of 
Harrisburg. For in those days we still travelled 
by canals, and a " low bridge " had knocked that 
hat into the water. With the aid of a boat-hook I 
had rescued it; but it was not in a condition to 
wear, and so made my first appearance on the 
steps of the church in which I was to find my Sun- 
day home from October to March, in a Scotch 
travelling-cap. The most of my possessions, in- 
cluding almost all my sermons, were on board the 
schooner, Mozart, which had sailed from Boston 



21 8 Sixty Years 

to Washington the week before. The Mozart was 
a month on her passage. So I and my congrega- 
tion were in no danger of old sermons in that 
interval ; we had to get our spiritual food off the 
days and weeks as they passed us. 

I soon discovered that if Washington were the 
capital of a great nation, it was also an agreeable 
country town. Among other things, there were 
good saddle-horses there. And one of the 
changes, not for the better, which half a century 
has made, has been the destruction of some lovely 
woods, and so of the pretty lawns they half hid. 
After Congress met, as many as fifty of the 
members generally rode in the saddle from their 
homes to the Capitol. On a pleasant day, when 
you went to the Capitol, if Congress were in 
session, you saw fifty horses at as many posts in 
the great court-yard fronting the building, waiting 
under the care of some " mild police," till the 
session was over. 

The first thing that struck me as a youngster in 
Washington was the ease of its social arrange- 
ments. And it is immensely creditable to the 
sensible people who live there that they have 
succeeded in maintaining the simplicity to a 
certain extent, in the midst of the temptations 
to imitate Europe, and the pressure of the 
government of an empire. What do I mean by 
simple social arrangements? I mean that, of 
an afternoon, when I was taking my constitu- 
tional with George Abbott, he would say, 



Wanderjahre 2 1 9 

"Where shall we have our tea?" I would say, 
" I have not been in at the Seatons' for a week or 
two ; " and we would go round, ring the door-bell 
at that charming house, and go in, to find perhaps 
twenty or thirty visitors, three quarters of whom 
were gentlemen, in those hospitable parlors. 
This would not be on the day when they 
"received" particularly; the house was open, 
with a cordial hospitality, to the large circle of 
Mr, and Mrs. Seaton's friends. And this was 
not exceptional. I was once scolding about the 
stiffness of Boston society at the Examiner Club, 
and told this story. And I said, " Is there any 
Mrs. Seaton in Boston where I could do that 
thing?" My companion answered with perfect 
frankness, " If there were any such person, she 
would move out of town to-morrow." 

Or take another illustration. We had what we 
called a gymnasium, which was an open lot, 
fenced in, I think, with plank, which must have 
been about where Connecticut Avenue crosses 
K Street. All the machinery of our gymnasium 
was a bowling-alley, where anybody who belonged 
to the club went and rolled ten-pins. Now 
President Tyler was in his last year of office. 
Of an autumn afternoon he would walk across 
and roll ten-pins with the gentlemen of this club. 
I think I never met him there, but I have rolled 
ten-pins with Mrs. Madison, — I a youngster of 
twenty-three, and she a lady of well-nigh eighty. 
We had the greatest difficulty, I remember, in 



2 20 Sixty Years 

getting her balls down the alley, and there was 
very elaborate old-fashioned compHmenting about 
her overthrowing the king. 

If you wanted, in those days, to see the Presi- 
dent, or the ladies of his family, you went round 
to the White House and rang the door-bell and 
asked if Mr. Tyler were in, or Mrs. Tyler were in, 
exactly as you would ask if it had been at No. 
999 H. Street. You went in and you sat down, 
and the visit was exactly like the visit at any other 
house in the evening. 

The winter which I spent in Washington was, 
as I have said, the winter of the annexation of 
Texas. I hope I need not say that I was present 
at every important debate on that subject in the 
House of Representatives and in the Senate. 
On the 2d of March I returned home. I called 
on Mr. Choate, as the Massachusetts senator, in 
the Senate. I called him out and asked him 
what I should say to my father. "Tell him we 
are beaten," said Mr. Choate, " Magno prcelio victi 
sumus." Texas was annexed the next day. 

I came home to Boston wild with the excite- 
ment of the defeat. I wrote a pamphlet, and 
printed it at my own charge, which I called, 
" How to Conquer Texas before Texas Conquers 
us." I thought it would be possible to rouse the 
anti-slavery men of the North to an emigration 
into Texas. I meant to go with them, to fulfil 
any duty which I could discharge there. I was 
young enough and green enough to suppose that 



Freedom in Texas 221 

the people who had so earnestly expressed their 
conviction that Texas should not be annexed, 
would join in such an enterprise to make Texas 
a free State. Had I been older I should have 
tried to take the lead of such an enterprise myself. 
As it was, I printed my pamphlet, which so far as 
I know no one read. Of this I am certain, that 
no one ever spent five cents for a copy, and the 
edition was upon my hands. I have always been 
proud that I wrote it, and a few years afterward 
I entered into similar enterprises for emigration 
to Kansas. I now reprint this pamphlet as finding 
its best place among these Biographical Sketches. 



FREEDOM IN TEXAS 
[Published in March, 1845.] 

What shall we do? 

The Senate has passed the annexation resolu- 
tions. 

The House has assented to the compromise 
amendment, which compromises nothing but the 
integrity and honor of two Senators. 

Mr. Tyler has signed the resolves. 

Massachusetts and New England have resolved, 
in this emergency, not to withdraw from the Union. 
They have resolved rightly. They have preferred 
still to do in the Union, what measure of good 



22 2 Sixty Years 

they might, although the instrument of union is 
thus rudely attacked and wounded. 

Massachusetts, or again let us say New England, 
desires to do what of good may still be done, not- 
withstanding this reckless action of a partisan 
Congress. 

The scene of action, however, is now removed. 
New England can no longer hope to effect any 
thing by the eloquence of her statesmen in Con- 
gress. Texas itself is the proper scene for her 
future efforts. Good men and true have now to 
labor in and on Texas, to avert the dangers of 
annexation. 

Those dangers were manifold. They included 

I. The injury inflicted by the measure on the 
Federal Constitution. 

II. The weakness of the Federal Government, 
more dangerous as the extent of territory of the 
Union increases. 

III. The continuation, through an undefined 
time, of slavery, in a region adapted to it as Texas 
is by its position. 

IV. The destruction of the balance of power 
between free and slave States, and Atlantic and 
Western States. ^ 

V. The introduction into the Union of an un- 
principled population of adventurers, with all the 
privileges of a State of naturalized citizens. 

VI. The creation of an enormous State, in time 

1 See Appendix A. 



Freedom in Texas 223 

to become the real Empire State of the country. 
Texas, with three hundred and ten thousand 
square miles of territory, is admitted as one State, 
into the Union. If she remain such, she will prove 
the Austria of the confederacy, to overrule all 
opposition. ^ 

Of these evils, the two first are now past remedy. 
They were inflicted, and inflicted forever, when 
Mr, Tyler set his name to the Joint Resolutions. 

The other evils, however, all suppose a condi- 
tion which it is still in the power of Northern men 
to overthrow. 

They suppose, that is, that the population of 
Texas, with the rapid increase which it shall gain 
when united to this confederacy, is to be a slave- 
holding population; a population of the same 
views and principles with that which first colo- 
nized the country, and which now holds it. 

In the ordinary course of emigration, this sup- 
position would prove true. Must it prove true, 
however? May not Northern men, — Northern 
capitalists, Northern emigrants, Northern fathers 
and mothers. Northern teachers and pupils, — 
change this condition? May not the North pour 
down its hordes upon these fertile valleys, and bear 
civilization, and Christianity and freedom into their 
recesses? Northern energy has peopled and civ- 
ilized southern countries heretofore — may it not 
again? 

^ See Appendix B. 



2 24 Sixty Years 

We ask to these questions the attention of all 
considerate men, who view the admission to the 
Union of Texas, as Texas now is, an evil. We 
may not, we ought not to leave Texas as it is. 
We ought, by acting in Texas, by our emigrants 
in Texas, by our moral influence in Texas, by our 
votes in Texas, to continue there the contest of 
freedom, in the first skirmish of which we have 
been defeated. We ought thus to prevent the 
four last evils which have been named. We 
ought to hasten the end of slavery in Southeast- 
ern Texas, and make Northern and Western Texas 
free. We ought to restore the balance of power 
between the free and slave States. We ought 
to place in Texas a population of high principle, 
if we can ; and we ought to attain such influence 
in Texan councils, that Texas shall be from time 
to time subdivided, as need may be. Such a sub- 
division will never take place, if all Texas is to 
hold slaves, unless the federal Union pay roundly 
for it. Why should it? Why should Texas sub- 
divide herself, if she be a State of homogeneous 
interest, and if by remaining whole she can control 
the Union? 

There can be no question that Texas, particularly 
the upper country of Texas, is naturally one of the 
finest agricultural countries in the world. 

" The country," says Iken, " is naturally divided 
into three separate regions which in many re- 
spects differ from each other. The first, a level 
region, extends along the coast, with a breadth in- 



Freedom in Texas 225 

land varying from one hundred miles where 
greatest, in the centre, to seventy and thirty miles, 
being most contracted towards the southwest 
extremity. The soil of this region is a rich allu- 
vium, with scarcely a stone, yet singularly free 
from stagnant swamps. Broad woodlands fringe 
the banks of the rivers, between which are ex- 
tensive pasture lands. The second division, the 
largest of the three, is the undulating or rolling 
prairie region, which extends for one hundred and 
fifty or two hundred miles farther inland, its wide 
grassy tracts alternating with others that are 
thickly timbered. These last are especially pre- 
valent in the east, though the bottoms and river- 
valleys throughout the whole region are w^ell 
wooded. Limestone and sandstone form the com- 
mon substrata of this region; the upper soil con- 
sists of a rich friable loam, mixed indeed with sand, 
but seldom to such an extent as to prevent the 
culture of the most exhausting products. The 
third, or mountainous region, situated principally 
on the west or southwest, forms part of the great 
Sierra Madre, or Mexican Alps, but little explored, 
and still unsettled." 

Of the midland district, the English traveller, 
Mrs. Houston, speaks, from the observations of 
those who had seen it, in these words : 

" To the lowlands, which are certainly not 
healthy, but wonderfully rich and productive, suc- 
ceed the beautifully undulating rolling prairies. 
Nothing can surpass this portion of Texas in natu- 

15 



2 26 Sixty Years 

ral attractions ; its ever verdant prairies resemble 
our most beautiful parks; magnificent clumps of 
timber are scattered over its surface, and its val- 
leys are watered by quick-running streams." 

It will be remembered that in the whole of this 
Republic there are not now, at the largest compu- 
tation, more than three hundred thousand persons. 
Its population is about that of the State of New 
Hampshire. The most thickly settled portion of 
the district is the lowland. Most easily culti- 
vated, most fit for that barbarous rudeness of labor, 
which alone is possible in a slave country, this 
district, if we are rightly informed, has filled up 
most rapidly. To freemen, however, the midland 
district offers equal or superior advantages. The 
climate is better; the cooler air, and consequent 
vigor and health, give an advantage which the 
slight ease of tillage gained on the sea-coast does 
not counterbalance. It is already an extensive 
grazing country, and it would seem that the 
agricultural product can scarcely be named which 
may not be raised there. Maize, rye, barley, and 
oats; peaches, melons, figs, and in the warmer 
sections olives, dates, pine-apples, oranges, and 
lemons; the sugar-cane, tobacco, and short-sta- 
pled cotton are all mentioned among successful 
crops in this midland region. 

It is not wild nor Utopian to hope that, by a 
systematic and united effort, free emigration, and 
free labor, and free institutions, may attain a pre- 
dominance in this territory. As we have said, 



Freedom in Texas 227 

it is as yet thinly settled. The inland parts of 
Texas, and more especially those directly west of 
Louisiana, and south and west of our Indian terri- 
tory, 1 do not now contain an individual to the 
square mile. In those parts, if Northern settlers 
will turn thither, if Northern capitalists will assist 
them, if Northern associations will unite them, if 
Christian principles will rule them, — in those 
parts may be planted freedom in Texas. Those 
parts of the country may one day be its wealth- 
iest, its strongest, and its most populous parts. 
Those parts may at no distant day supply, by their 
looms and their workshops, the manufactures 
which their slave-holding neighbors need. Those 
free States shall hem in, shall discountenance, shall 
work the end of the dojncstic institution. Their 
institutions of learning, their schools and colleges, 
and libraries, shall enlighten Texas. And it is not 
impossible that this result may come soon. It is 
not extravagant to hope for it. 

There does not need any spasmodic exertion, 
any self-sacrifice, any crusading spirit, to effect it. 
The means are already at work which may com- 
pass it, if principle, and morals, and religion can 
direct them. Those means are found in the 
immense emigration now in progress, from free 
States. The only labor necessary to those who 

1 The territory to which the Indians have been removed by the 
United States Government, comprises the districts west of 
Arkansas and Missouri. It has been ceded to the removed 
tribes forever. 



2 28 Sixty Years 

would free Texas, or a part of Texas, is in turning 
a comparatively small part of this emigration 
thither. Some farther pains will be needed, that 
such settlers shall not forget their Northern feelings 
beneath a southern sun ; that they shall retain the 
love of labor and the hatred of slavery, which they 
feel sincerely when they leave their homes. A 
calculation, based on the censuses of 1830 and 
1840,-^ gives us a view of the emigration from 
free States during that period, which we may 
fairly take for the basis of calculation for the 
present time. That emigration has doubtless in- 
creased with the increase of the population of the 
country. The westward emigration of that period 
was at the average rate of two per cent of the 
population of the old free States at its commence- 
ment. If that average were precisely correct at 
the present time, the westward emigration of 
the present year, 1845, would be 129,261 indivi- 
duals. The emigration of ten years, between 
1840 and 1850, from the old free States, to the 
new free States and territories, will probably prove 
to be about 1,300,000 persons. That of the ten 
years between 1830 and 1840 was something more 
than 1,000,000 persons. 

Now, cannot Northern Texas, south of the ridic- 
ulous "compromise line," ^ be included among 
these free States and territories? It is what Wis- 
consin was five years since. Cannot some part of 
this emigration of Northern free men and women 
1 See Appendix C. 2, See Appendix D. 



Freedom in Texas 229 

be led thither? If only a tenth part took that 
course, there would be in 1855 a population of 
150,000 free men in those districts. There would 
be a half or a quarter of that number of slave- 
holders. Place free and slave labor together, 
on fair ground, with no prejudice to favor the one 
or the other, and as sure as God's word is true, as 
sure as truth is stronger than falsehood, as sure as 
hope is stronger than fear, as sure as the soul, 
and the heart, and the mind, have more power 
than passions or terrors, in inducing men to 
labor, — so surely will free labor obtain a hold 
in any country, and drive out the forced labor 
of slaves. 

Though the space allowed in this pamphlet 
scarcely permits allusion to any but the political 
and moral inducements to such a turn of emigra- 
tion, it offers a full display of temptations to the 
settler, even had he not such views as these. So 
he be assured that the new States to be made in 
Northern Texas shall be free States, that his chil- 
dren and his children's children shall grow up in a 
truly free land, he will find in Texas a thousand 
advantages which neither Michigan, nor Wisconsin, 
nor Iowa, nor Illinois can offer. The climate is 
milder, the variety of timber is greater, and it is 
more generally dispersed; the soil is as good as 
any in the world. The published accounts of the 
midlands of Texas, from which we have already 
quoted a few words, will show them to be as fine 
territory as the world affords. 



230 Sixty Years 

To bodies of settlers from the Eastern States, it 
would scarcely be more difficult to reach these 
districts than to remove themselves to Wisconsin 
or Iowa. Galveston, or New Orleans, give ready 
access to them ; New Orleans to the Red River 
lands, or Galveston to those in other parts of 
Texas. Freight and passage to either of these 
ports may at all times be readily obtained in any 
of the Atlantic seaports ; and once arrived at 
either, the remainder of a settler's journey is less 
arduous than would be the close of it, if he went 
wholly by land to a Northwestern State. 

Such being the ease of emigration, it does not 
seem absurd to hope that a part of the army of 
settlers who are leaving their homes this year, — 
who will leave their homes for years to come, — 
will march into the fertile prairies and woodlands 
of Texas. 

Is it too much to hope that they will carry 
with them the principles of their first homes? Is 
it too much to ask them to live there, to die there, 
and to vote there, freemen ; and never to surrender 
themselves in bondage to the most corrupting 
institution that the world knows? Surely there is 
no reason to fear that if they are surrounded by a 
large enough number of persons of their own feel- 
ings and sympathies, they will fall back to the 
customs which now unfortunately rule the country 
where they are to settle ! Such an effort to intro- 
duce free labor and free institutions on the virgin 
soil of a new republic must command the sympa- 



Freedom in Texas 231 

thy of freemen and of Christians the world over. 
It must arouse to the full the zeal of those who arc 
embarked in it. They would labor not only as 
adventurers in a new land, but as the pilgrims who 
were the pioneers there of a great principle. And 
through these means they would receive the bless- 
ing of that Providence which, though it employ 
human means, always smiles on such high prin- 
ciple, and guides it to success. 

The result of such an emigration as has been 
supposed, on the basis suggested, would be speedy 
and important. If one tenth of the settlers who 
will leave the old free States, within the ten next 
years, should settle in Texas, there would be a 
population in the midlands and uplands of Texas, 
at the end of that time, and probably before, of 
more than 200,000 people. A great majority of 
these would be attached to free institutions. Here 
would be the material for two new free States, who 
would have such a voice in the Texan legislature, 
as to compel their separation when they should 
demand it, and who would be ready to join this 
Union as separate and independent States, before 
more than one slave State could be carved out of 
the remainder of Texas. On the ordinary calcu- 
lation that five persons compose a family, the emi- 
gration from the old free States of 12,000 men, 
who would take with them their families, or collect 
them around them in Texas, would be a stock, 
with those whom they would find there, from 
which would spring at once a new State, to be 



232 Sixty Years 

independent of other Texan influence, and to be 
free in its institutions and manners. 

Such an emigration is not extravagant or impos- 
sible. It is for young men and women who propose 
to go westward, to remember the cause of freedom 
and of their country, and travel southward rather 
than northward; to turn to Texas and its mild 
climate rather than Wisconsin and its more inclem- 
ent air. Let them associate together, and they 
may have at once the strength and comfort of a 
village in their new home. It is for the organiza- 
tions which have opposed the admission of Texas 
to take measures for the same end, now that that 
admission is sure. A twentieth part of the peti- 
tioners against the annexation may strip the 
annexation of its worst evils. It is for men of 
capital to look to the interest of the Union, and 
make such purchases of land in Texas that they 
may assist the poor settler who has no money to 
establish himself there ; but who has a true heart, 
and will have a true vote, when he arrives there. 
And if these will labor in the cause, God will 
watch the issue ; and the conquest of Texas, by 
the peaceful weapons of truth, of freedom, of 
religion, and of right, will be sure. 



Freedom in Texas 233 



APPENDIX 

(A.) We take from the Boston Advertiser the follow- 
ing computations of the present and future balance of 
power between the States. 

It is the common habit of the people of this country, to look 
forward with complacency to the prospect of the future 
growth of the country in numbers, wealth, and power ; and 
therefore an increase of territory, especially if it be such a 
territory as is capable of sustaining a thinking population, 
is conceived to be, as a matter of course, a desirable acqui- 
sition. There are many who are accustomed to make cal- 
culations of the rate of increase, by which the country will 
become, in the course of a few years, one of the most power- 
ful nations, not merely of the Western continent, but of the 
civilized world. The ratio of increase which has governed 
the growth of our population since the declaration of inde- 
pendence, will, according to these calculations, in the space 
of another fifty years, swell the population of the country to 
80,000,000. 

Long before this period shall arrive, they argue that the 
seat of power, and the centre of population, will be trans- 
ferred from the Atlantic States to the Western side of the 
mountains. 

To give the proper extension to the vast empire of which 
this rich country is to become the seat, and to give it, as 
well as the territory of the United States, a more regular 
conformation, the annexation of Texas is necessary. By 
this annexation, also, the object is expedited and rendered 
more sure, of transferring the centre of population and influ- 
ence to the banks of the Mississippi. With this addition, 
and without allowing any great preponderance to Oregon, 
the precise centre will be upon the father of waters, and in 



2 34 Sixty Years 

a very few years there will be no contest for the supremacy, 
between the East and the West. The only contest for the 
seat of empire will be between St. Louis and perhaps Mem- 
phis, or some other city to be erected upon the banks of the 
Mississippi, instead of retaining it where the seat of govern- 
ment is now placed, upon the banks of the Potomac. 

The present number of States being 26, the bills now re- 
ported in the House of Representatives, providing for the 
admission of Iowa and Florida, with a provision for a future 
subdivision of the latter into two States ; and Wiscon.sin 
being now by its population entitled to admission whenever 
it shall request it, we have 30 States, independently of Texas. 
Should the proviso for the subdivision of Florida be rejected, 
[as it since has been,] the number of States will be 29; with 
the addition of six States from Texas the number will be 35, 
and with another from Florida, 36. The balance of States 
will then be as follows : 

INCLUDING TEXAS 

Number of States. Square miles. 

Western States 21 or 20 990,000 

Atlantic States 15 321,400 

Slaveholding States, inc. Delaware . 21 or 20 883,400 

Free States 15 438,000 

EXCLUSIVE OF TEXAS 

Western States 15 or 14 672,000 

Atlantic States 15 321,000 

Slaveholding States 15 or 14 565,400 

Free States 15 438,000 

It will be observed, that the States bordering on the Gulf 
of Mexico are classed with the Western States, and that the 
Western Territories not yet entitled to admission as States, 
with Oregon, are not included in this computation. 

(B.) The injury which we have last mentioned is 
that most dwelt on by Mr. Benton, in his conclusive 



Freedom in Texas 235 

speech against Mr. Brown's resolution. That resolu- 
tion admits Texas as one State. By the constitution of 
the United States, no States can be subdivided without 
the consent of its own authorities. The subdivision of 
Georgia from its original size was only obtained after long 
delay, by grants to that State of land, and of services in 
removing Indians, from the federal government, amount- 
ing, according to Mr. Benton, eventually, to more than 
$20,000,000. This became, then, he said in closing, a 
matter of calculation. If it required twenty years, and 
$20,000,000, to induce Georgia, without debt as she was, 
to give up territory for one State, how long and how 
much will it take to induce debt-ridden Texas, to cede 
territory for four or five States? 

(C.) In 1830, the population of the United 

States was 12,866,020 

In 1840 17,068,666 

Increase 4,202,646 

Of this increase, about 600,000, probably, was due to 
foreign emigration. The increase of population from other 
causes, then, was 3,602,646, or about 28 per cent of the 
population in 1830. We take 28 per cent, therefore, as the 
ratio of natural increase of population, in ten years. 

In 1S30 the population of the free Western 
States and Territories was 1,470,018 

In 1840 it was 2,967,840 

The increase was 1,497,822 

Of this increase, the portion not resulting from 
emigration may be taken at ...... 411,604 

that being 28 per cent of the population in 1830. 

The increase by emigration into those States 

is then 1,086,218 



236 Sixty Years 

This emigration was almost wholly from old free States, 
or through free States. The population of the old free 
States in 1830, was 5,536,779. The emigration westward 
in the next ten years was about 20 per cent of that num- 
ber. We take two per cent of the population of the old 
States, therefore, as the proportion which shows the 
annual emigration from them. 

(D.) The resolution which admits Texas, provides 
that there shall be no slavery in that portion north of 
36° 30', the Missouri compromise Hne. Mr. Adams 
and Mr. Brinkerhoff have both declared in Congress, 
that no pretension as to the territory of Texas ever 
carried it within a hundred miles of that line. Mr. Adams 
says that he never knew that it was thought by anyone 
to extend further north than 34°. The government map 
carries a strip of it up to the line of 42°. But whether 
this section be included eventually in Texas, or not, there 
is no question that it is a mountainous and desert region. 
The reasoning which we have attempted to press in this 
pamphlet relates only to territory farther south. 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 



BOSTON IN THE FORTIES 

I HAVE tried two or three times to describe in print 
the Boston in which I went and came as a teacher 
in the Latin School, as a reporter for the Daily 
Advertiser as sub-editor of the Advertiser and of 
the two magazines which have been named, and 
in all this as a student trying to prepare himself for 
the ministry. The people of the nineties do not 
much believe that there was any such idealistic 
wave as several of us have tried to describe. In 
a book called " Lowell and his Friends," I said that 
in the Boston of that day everybody knew every- 
body. One of the younger critics supposed that 
this was a snobbish statement that the " upper 
six hundred " all knew each other. This simply 
shows that in the Boston of half a million people 
you cannot make men understand what a small, 
active town is. To say " everybody knew every- 
body " does not imply that people in broadcloth 
knew people in broadcloth, or people in silks knew 
people in silks : it means that as you walk through 
the streets of a town which has in it not more than 
twenty thousand active men, which does not receive 
on any day more than a few hundred people from 
the outside, you do know, perhaps not by name, 

i6 



240 Sixty Years 

but by sight or sympathy, everybody you see. 
You recognize every hackman in such a town. 
You know the dififerent " hand-cart men" by sight, 
though you cannot say whether one is named 
Nahum Prince or another Asaph Allen. The 
evident snobbishness in the paper to which I 
refer was the snobbishness of the critic, and not 
of the person he criticised. 

Upon this simple life — village life, if you please 
— an ocean of foreign emigration was about to fall; 
and the Boston of to-day, more than half European 
by birth, does not recognize the homogeneous 
population of the Boston of 1840. There was a 
queer little colony of blacks over on the back of 
what was familiarly called " Nigger Hill." There 
was a very strong sentiment of the whites, un- 
favorable to them. And I have heard it said since, 
what I never knew at the time, that on holidays 
they were not permitted to advance beyond cer- 
tain limits on the Boston common. I doubt the 
accuracy of this statement myself; but it shows 
how stern was the feeling then that people of 
African origin were not Americans. 

With these comments I will now print two pas- 
sages, one from the Outlook and one from my 
own " Life of James Freeman Clarke," which will 
perhaps give some impression of the atmosphere 
of those six years. I will venture, however, to 
say that the period seems to be a curious period 
to all people who are fond of Boston, and that 
there have been many efforts to describe it. Dear 



Boston in the Forties 241 

Mrs. Howe has touched upon it in her remin- 
iscences; Dr. Holmes's letters refer to it; Dr. 
Lothrop published some reminiscences which 
throw light upon it ; all the biographies of Emer- 
son have reference to it ; the lives of Lyman 
Beecher, Prescott, Ticknor, and Hawthorne cover 
the same period; Mr. Harding's very curious 
" Egistography " gives some glimpses of it; Mr. 
Higginson's "Cheerful Yesterdays" discusses it; 
there are anecdotes of it in Sam Longfellow's life 
of his brother, and in Octavius Brooks Froth- 
ingham's "Recollections"; whenever Mr. Edward 
Everett's life shall be published that will throw light 
upon it. There can be no history of the religious 
development of New England, of its literary tri- 
umphs, of the utter change in its political system, 
or any discussion of the revolution which made 
over the New England of the first half of the cen- 
tury and changed it into the New England of the 
second half, which does not recur constantly for 
illustration or for explanation to these ten years in 
Boston, between 1840 and 1850. 



When I left college, I found myself in the 
midst of the curious wave of feeling, the value of 
which was felt in all New England. It was more 
felt in Boston than anywhere else. Different 
people have spoken of it as the Transcendental 
movement, or as the Philanthropic movement. 



16 



242 Sixty Years 

It passed on, and left its alluvial soil behind it. 
It did no harm, it did much good ; and, generally 
speaking, it is now forgotten. 

Dr. Channing, since the year 1803, had been 
preaching in Boston the possible perfection of 
human nature, or the divinity of man. He began 
to preach in a little, rather forlorn church, which 
was the remnant of a foreigners' church, a 
church of Scotch Presbyterians, of which "Johnny 
Moorhead " was the minister in the years before 
the Revolution. Channing had gone to this 
church because it was small and weak, and 
because he was weak and small ; but from the 
moment when his oracles were uttered there, the 
best people in Boston determined to hear him. 
And in 1840 Boston was led by the people who 
had been led by him. The foreign merchants of 
Boston, the men who were beginning to make 
Boston a manufacturing centre, the men who were 
planning the great railroad system which now 
spreads over this nation, were people who believed 
in the ideas which Channing proclaimed, namely, 
ideas centring in the divinity of man. 

These people showed their faith in various ways. 
They did or did not go to anti-slavery meetings in 
which Dr. Channing was interested. They did or 
did not think he was a fanatic when he proclaimed 
the wickedness of human slavery. But, all the 
same, they were men who believed in an Idea. 
In one way or another they showed their faith in 
their works. There were among them men who 



Boston in the Forties 243 

were used to victory. For instance, such men had 
created the fur trade on the northwest coast of 
America. This meant that they had sent out 
vessels loaded, you would say, with nothing, which 
came back after a three years' voyage filled with 
the most costly silks and spices and teas. They 
were men who remembered the time when they 
did the carrying trade for Europe, and when 
Napoleon himself had not been able to control 
them. They were men who knew that all things 
are possible to one who believes. 

The population of Boston in 1840 was ninety- 
three thousand. It was to the statistician an 
insignificant commercial town. But the people 
who Hved in Boston went and came like princes. 
Many of them had stood unawed before kings. 
And the leaders of them really believed that they 
could make the city of Boston the city of God, 
and they meant to do so. 

By which I mean that when they had an enter- 
prise in hand, the pattern for it was made full 
size. It was made on the largest scale. If they 
created the Massachusetts Hospital, it was to be 
large enough for the needs of all the people in the 
State of Massachusetts. When they created the 
Institution for the Blind, it was to be large enough 
for all the blind people in Massachusetts. When 
they established a House of Reformation, they 
really supposed that the vagrant boys in that 
House of Reformation were to be definitely and 
thoroughly Re-Formed. They knew no reason 



244 Sixty Years 

why they should not go forth to do such work as 
Benjamin FrankHn had done in the world. 

Such people, and the people under their lead, 
took an interest in what we should now call 
idealistic or sentimental enterprises such as has 
not been paralleled in what I have known of other 
cities. They were a little tired of the old drama, 
so they bought their old Boston Theatre and 
changed it into the Odeon. They arranged for 
the performance there of Beethoven's symphonies 
within fifteen years after Beethoven's death. Two 
thousand people crowded this building whenever 
these symphonies were performed. At the same 
time, one of these leaders whom I have described 
died in his Eastern travels. This man, John 
Lowell, Jr., left a fund of three hundred thousand 
dollars for the establishment of a popular univer- 
sity in Boston, which has lasted from that day 
to this. It provides for the delivery of free 
lectures, by the best men in the world, on the 
most important subjects of human knowledge. 
In the years 1840, 1841, and 1842, to give a 
single instance of what this meant, one of these 
courses of lectures was on " The Being and 
Attributes of God." It was delivered by James 
Walker, afterwards President of Harvard College. 
In a town of forty or fifty thousand people 
who, you might say, were of the lecture-going 
age, more than two thousand people regularly 
attended on these thoughtful, recondite, scientific 
discourses. 



Boston in the Forties 245 

At the same time, every vision of the future 
which was thrown upon the screen was watched 
and studied with eager enthusiasm. The anti- 
slavery people, the temperance people, the people 
who wanted to suppress Sunday, the Fourierites, 
all other Socialists, were sure of audiences at their 
conventions. You can open Faneuil Hall to-day, 
if fifty people sign a petition for the purpose, for 
the utterance of any reform fanatic ; but when he 
and the janitor come there, they will find that 
there are not present twenty-five of the people 
who signed the call. In those days, if the call was 
uttered, people came. 

It would be hard to say that there was any 
centre to this eager movement. But a picturesque 
place, where one who was wise enough might 
watch some of its currents, was the modest book- 
shop, kept in a private house. No. 12 West Street, 
by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, her sisters and her 
father. Miss Peabody had been a teacher of a 
girls' school. I think that it did not know much 
of the mechanism of modern school teaching, but 
I think there was there a good deal of the spirit 
of faith and hope and love. Perhaps people were 
tired of the school; I do not know. But she 
was herself on the very front edge of all advance 
movements, and somehow or other she and her 
sisters — afterwards Mrs. Horace Mann and Mrs. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne — opened a " foreign circu- 
lating library," and a book-shop for the sale of 
German and French books, in what was the front 



246 Sixty Years 

parlor of the house I have named. A counter 
ran across the parlor, the books of the circulating 
library stood on shelves in brown-paper covers, 
and such few books as they had in stock were 
pretty much anywhere as you looked around. 

I am afraid that the subscription to the library 
did not amount to much; I am afraid that the 
sales of books did not amount to much. But 
what happened was this : if you had a vacant ten 
minutes, you went in there, for it was just in the 
middle of the Boston of that time. You met 
there, as might happen, Bronson Alcott, James 
Freeman Clarke, Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, Horace Mann, George Bancroft, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frederick Hedge, even 
Andrews Norton, Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria 
Child or her husband, John Dwight, afterwards 
to be the musical critic ; Christopher Cranch, 
better remembered as a painter than as a preacher; 
George Ripley, and all the leaders of Brook Farm, 
James Lowell, William Story, William B. Greene, 
or the charming lady who was afterward his wife. 
Who was there that you did not meet who was 
wide awake and was interested in the future? 
You stood and talked there — gossiped if you 
please — with such people; and you carried off 
the "Revue de Deux Mondes" of the month 
before, or you looked between the leaves of 
Strauss's " Leben Jesu," or something else which 
had appeared from Europe. 

Perhaps somebody told you that Margaret 



Boston in the Forties 247 

Fuller's conversation of that week would be on 
the myth of Juno, or the myth of Ceres, and 
would n't you like to come round on Thursday 
evening? Or somebody told you that Mr. AUston 
would be at home on Tuesday evening, and did 
you not want to walk out to Cambridge and see 
him ? Or somebody said that thus-and-so would 
be going on in the preparations for Brook Farm. 
Or somebody asked you how you felt disposed 
toward the Anti-Sabbath Convention. Or you 
were asked to put your name down to a petition 
for the abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia, If you had that ten minutes in the 
midst of a workaday life, and looked in at 12 
West Street, you were made sure, if you had not 
known it before, that this world has a future, and 
that very probably it was true that the kingdom 
of God was at hand. 

I do not know if young people of both sexes in 
Boston, in New York, or Chicago, have any such 
loafing-place now, where they can meet at hap- 
hazard, where a walk can begin or can end. Let 
the people of the small cities remember that it 
is their great joy that such simple things are 
possible with them. You met Margaret Fuller or 
Dr. Holmes or Mr. Bancroft, or some John or 
Mary, some Alva or Zebedee unknown to fame. 
"Are you going to walk?" or "Would you like 
to go round the common?" or "Are you taking 
your constitutional?" And you two took your 
constitutional together. Some of Miss Fuller's 



248 Sixty Years 

conversations which have been made famous by 
the interest which attaches to her life were in 
the parlors upstairs. I do not recollect any 
machinery of tickets or of formal invitations. 
It seems as if the company were selected by 
the " law of attraction." This was the central 
phrase in Fourier's plans, then popular in all 
such circles, but now forgotten. I think the 
Brook Farm people all made their regular head- 
quarters at the " Foreign Circulating Library." 
I am afraid that the helter-skelter in which every- 
body availed himself of its hospitalities did not 
promote its pecuniary success. 

Whoever deals with the local history of the 
town in these years has to attempt the description 
of a certain local ferment, involving eager expec- 
tation and a readiness for new things, which cer- 
tainly does not characterize the Boston of to-day, 
and did not characterize the Boston of the begin- 
ning of the century. The anti-slavery leaders 
were at their best; they had a mountain to cast 
into the sea, and they were loyally going about 
that business, with little but faith to sustain them. 
Reformers of every school had broken with all 
the bonds which the church, in various organiza- 
tions, had contrived for their repression. In 
speculation, morals, and the philosophy of the 
intellect, as in the consideration of religion, the 
word " transcendental " had begun to be heard, 
and with it came the suspicion that the higher law, 
nay, the highest law, might be found available as 



Boston in the Forties 249 

an everyday direction. Into the midst of the 
enthusiasm thus aroused came the prophecies of 
the psychical experimenters of whatever name, — 
each one generally adopting a new one, — and 
they brought their fascinating suggestion that by 
rightly developing the fit organs of the brain, we 
might produce, almost to order, poetry better 
than Dante's or Milton's, and science more accu- 
rate than Newton's or La Place's. In a word, 
prophecy was in order, — not to say in fashion. 
There was a general sympathy with Saint Paul and 
George Fox and people of that type who did not 
travel in the steps of Pharisees or of priests. Mr. 
Brisbane, by admirably conducted propaganda, 
was bringing into notice Charles Fourier's plans ; 
and dear Robert Owen, not meaning to be for- 
gotten, came from England with his own. In 
Boston, by a sort of natural law, the prophets of 
new beliefs or new suspicions made rendezvous. 
When, in 1842, the friends of Bronson Alcott 
thought to give him, and indeed themselves, a 
little rest, by sending him to Europe on a summer 
outing, as he landed at Liverpool he met some 
correspondents who with him instantly held a con- 
vention at a school which had been named Alcott 
Lodge in his honor. At this convention it was at 
once voted that the United States of America was 
the fittest place for the redemption of mankind to 
begin. And so, before the summer was over, he 
returned, with a certain Mr. Lane and Mr. Wright, 
with spirits far more excited than his own, to 



250 Sixty Years 

undertake that redemption. They held new con- 
ventions, and established the experiment of " Con- 
sociation " to " redeem society from the institution 
of property." They were quite successful in this 
effort, so far as the property-holding members of 
their own number are to be regarded. This " move- 
ment " was a little later in time than the associa- 
tions which had tried other social experiments at 
Brook Farm, at Hopedale, and at Florence, not 
to mention places outside of New England. 

Meanwhile, the idolatry of the letter of Scripture 
bore legitimate fruit in the proclamation by William 
Miller that the world would end in the year 1843, 
on or about the 20th of March. The mathematical 
instinct of New England especially approved of 
the additions and subtractions of figures which 
were found in the books of Daniel and the Revela- 
tion, which, beginning with dates in Rollin's His- 
tory, came out neatly, by the older calendar, at 
the beginning of 1843. The Latter-Day Saints, 
generally known as Mormons, also had an estab- 
lishment in Boston, where the Golden Book was 
expounded. 

In more decorous quarters, the ferment created 
by the Oxford Movement in England was scarcely 
less. The most striking tracts and papers in the 
English controversy were reprinted in America; 
and on a smaller scale the Protestant Episcopal 
Church here repeated the discussions, and tried 
the experiments in ritual, which were thrilling the 
Established Church of England. 



Boston in the Forties 251 

Mr. Emerson's career as a lecturer was just 
beginning. It is hard to say that he was at his 
best at one period of his Hfe more than at another. 
But it is on record that I\Ir. Emerson said that 
" the usual experience is " that a man thinks his 
best thoughts between thirty and forty. " When 
the impulse of youth is on the man he sees most 
clearly." In the same years, or a little later, 
William Henry Channing spent some months in 
Boston, and called together a sympathetic religious 
society. " If he had told us to take any bootblack 
from the street into our homes and clothe him in 
purple and fine linen, we would have done so," — 
these are the words of one of his admirers. For 
the pure and simple gift of eloquence, so far as it 
consists in seizing the right word at the right 
instant, and speaking with all the passion of per- 
sonal conviction, Mr. Channing had no rival among 
the men around him. 

Margaret Fuller, too, had begun her series of 
" Conversations " in Boston. The description of 
them in the Life of her by Freeman Clarke, 
William Henry Channing, and Emerson, is from 
Channing's pen and her own. Her conduct of 
these classes, as they were called for want of a 
better name, was " excellent," to take Mr. Emer- 
son's phrase. She sat at one end of the room, 
and the body of visitors, or " assistants," arranged 
themselves as they could, so that they might see 
and hear her. Nine-tenths of them w^ere in the 
mood of people paying homage, which indeed she 



252 Sixty Years 

well deserved. But she would not and did not 
accept it. The skill, the tact, with which she 
threw back the ball of conversation, so as to start 
this listener or that, and the success with which 
she made him speak and say his best, were clear 
tokens of her real genius, and, more than anything 
she said herself, showed that she was the mistress 
of the company and of the occasion. 



WORCESTER 



WORCESTER 

These Wanderjahre ended on the 29th of April, 
1846, when I became the minister of the Church 
of the Unity in Worcester. Worcester had been 
a quiet shire town, but was just awakening to its 
position as centre of a great raihvay system. My 
father had built the railway to Worcester, and had 
directed the initial surveys of that to Albany. My 
friend Frederic Greenleaf, the Harry Wadsworth 
of " Ten Times One," told me that with his own 
hand he threw the switch which opened the way 
to Springfield of the small four-wheeled car which 
contained all the freight which Boston had to send 
to the west on that day. I have always called 
Worcester a western town in the heart of New 
England. I found there an admirable parish of 
people earnestly religious, but utterly unecclesias- 
tical. Without any feeling that I was protesting 
against anybody's else course, I always supposed 
myself a minister of the town as well as the min- 
ister of one particular parish ; and while I always 
enjoyed parish duty and parish life, I had always 
on hand, in close connection with them, a set of 
occupations which had to do with all the people 



256 Sixty Years 

of the town. I was asked to serve on the school 
committee as other clergymen were. I said very 
frankly that I had rather be on the Overseers of 
the Poor, and the nominating committee took me 
at my word and placed me there. Everything was 
in a tangle then, in Massachusetts, because the 
State had not defined its position with regard to 
foreign paupers. This led me to write and pub- 
lish my " Letters on Irish Emigration " in the 
winter of 1851-52. These suggested the present 
basis of our State legislation; and the present 
system of State almshouses is founded on those 
suggestions. Worcester was forming itself rapidly 
to be the well organized city that it is. I think I 
was able to be of some use in the formation of 
the Natural History Society and the Public Library. 
As early as 1845, when I returned from Wash- 
ington after listening to the great Texas debate, 
I printed, as I have said, a pamphlet on emigration 
to Texas called " How to conquer Texas before 
Texas conquers us." At that time, I would have 
gladly joined any colony which took the good 
advice there given. But my plan attracted no 
attention. When, however, in 1852 Mr. Eli Thayer, 
of Worcester, with the foresight of a statesman, 
made his great plans for emigration to Kansas, 
which saved Kansas as a free State, I was close at 
his side, and I tried to render material assis- 
tance in that effort. My father gave us the full 
use of the Daily Advertiser, which was the lead- 
ing paper of New England. Mr. Greeley, in the 



Colonization of Kansas 257 

Tribtme, published our articles as editorials. A 
dozen other leading newspapers favored the 
cause of emigration in the same way. I went 
almost everywhere in New England, addressing 
audiences on Kansas, and the way to it. I was 
on the executive committee of the Emigrant 
Aid Company, which for years kept a close 
connection with the new-born State. The com- 
pany had the satisfaction of seeing Kansas ad- 
mitted as a free State in 1861. 

It is because for some years my life was all mixed 
up with this Kansas emigration that I include in 
this collection a paper on the history of that 
movement, written by me in 1897. I ^"^ "ow 
the president of the New England Emigrant Aid 
Company, of which at that time I was one of the 
directors. 



NEW ENGLAND IN THE COLONIZATION OF 
KANSAS 

[First published in Hurd's New England States, 1897] 

The great Missouri question of 18 19 and 1820 
agitated New England to the very heart. But 
our generation has forgotten the excitement of 
the great Missouri controversy; indeed, every 
generation has to repeat the experiences and 
lessons of its founders. 

The compromises of the Constitution, as they 
17 



258 Sixty Years 

have been called, were intended to quiet the discus- 
sion on the slavery issue between the North and the 
South. In a way they did so for thirty years. But 
the South was always jealous of the North, and in the 
concession of powerto the three Virginian dynasties, 
which held the executive office from 1801 to 1825, a 
Southern policy, which looked always first to the 
institution of slavery, governed the national ad- 
ministration. When, therefore, in the year 18 19, 
the question came up of the admission of Missouri 
as a slave State, the Southern party seems to have 
taken it for granted that the existence of slavery in 
that new State would be permitted. On the other 
hand, the Northern States resented this claim, and 
the heated Missouri discussion of 1819 followed, 
precisely as if a like question had not been dis- 
cussed thirty years before. 

The people of Massachusetts, almost unani- 
mously, opposed the extension of slavery into the 
new State. On the 3d of December, 18 19, a great 
public meeting of the inhabitants of Boston and 
vicinity was held in the Doric Hall of the State 
House in Boston. Daniel Webster presided, and in 
his speech on that occasion uttered what was 
undoubtedly the real conviction of his life, as to 
the danger of the farther extension of slavery. 
A committee was formed, of which he was the 
chairman, to prepare a memorial to Congress on 
this subject; and that memorial is a strong 
argument in favor of confining slavery to the 
States already in existence. There is no more 



Colonization of Kansas 259 

scandalous illustration of the falsehood of written 
history than the entire omission in Curtis's " Life 
of Daniel Webster," of all reference to the part 
which he took in the protest of the North on that 
occasion. 

In the treaty with France, regarding the sale to 
the United States of the territory of Louisiana, no 
reference had been made to any supposed rights as 
to slavery of the handful of whites who were on the 
western side of the Mississippi. And so little idea 
had Mr. Jefferson or his advisers of the value of 
their great purchase that Robert Livingston, who 
made the bargain with Napoleon, in 1803 wrote 
home to Mr. Jefferson that he had assured every- 
one whom he met that not an emigrant would be 
sent across the Mississippi River in the next hun- 
dred years. So little did the statesmen of that 
time anticipate the necessity of making arrange- 
ments for the social condition of those who should 
emigrate. 

The agitation on the subject was for a moment 
numbed, and a certain status qtw was attained by 
the passage of what has always been known as the 
Missouri Compromise. When matters seemed at 
a deadlock in Washington, Henry Clay introduced 
this compromise, which provided that the State of 
Missouri, then seeking for existence, should be 
admitted with the toleration of the institution of 
slavery, but that in all future time the territory 
north of the parallel of 36° 30', which is the 
southern line of Missouri, should be free terri- 



26 o Sixty Years 

tory. This granted to the slaveholders the future 
State of Arkansas and, by impHcation, perhaps, the 
future State of Florida ; at that moment there was 
no question with regard to Texas. With the an- 
nexation of Texas to the country, the whole ques- 
tion, of course, recurred ; for the whole of Texas 
is south of the line of 36° 30'. The Southern 
power, with its accustomed alliance in the State 
of New York, succeeded in carrying the day in 
that great controversy, and, to the disappointment 
of the Northern States, the whole territory of Texas 
was given over to slavery. 

Flushed by this triumph and by the virtual 
triumph which the South won in what were 
called the "Compromise Measures" of 1850, the 
handful of men who led the South to its ruin^ 
supposed that they could achieve anything they 
chose in the future. And accordingly, on the 4th 
day of January, 1854, Mr. Douglas reported from 
the Committee on Territories in the United States 
Senate, the famous Nebraska Bill, providing for a 
new territory, which was to be named as Nebraska, 
into which territory slavery might be introduced 
by persons who owned slaves. 

Here was a distinct disavowal of the Missouri 
Compromise of thirty-four years previous. This 
act of bad faith was all that was needed to give 
unanimity to the whole North on this subject. Up 
to that time the leaders of political parties at the 
North had spoken of the Missouri Compromise 
1 Mr. Edward Everett used to say that there were nine of them. 



Colonization of Kansas 261 

as a sort of ultimatum, and with bated breath. 
They had conscientiously felt that their fathers had 
made an arrangement, from which, in a certain 
way, the North had profited, and that they were 
bound in honor to respect the conditions of that 
arrangement. But if this compromise was to be 
torn to pieces, this point of honor no longer existed. 
The only difficulty was to know what was the most 
practical way in which to act. 

This difficulty was met promptly by a proposal 
from Mr. Eli Thayer, a member of the Massachu- 
setts legislature. Mr, Thayer introduced into the 
legislature of 1854 a petition for the incorporation 
of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. 
The act is in the following words : — 

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

In the Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty-Four. 

An Act, 
To Incorporate the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company. 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa- 
tives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority 
of the same, as follows : 

Sect. I. Benjamin C. Clark, Isaac Livermore, Charles 
Allen, Isaac Davis, William G. Bates, Stephen C. Phillips, 
Charles C. Hazewell, Alexander H. Bullock, Henry 
"Wilson, James S. Whitney, Samuel E. Sewall, Samuel 
G. Howe, James Holland, Moses Kimball, James D. 
Green, Francis W. Bird, Otis Clapp, Anson Burlingame, 
Eli Thayer, and Otis Rich, their associates, successors 



262 Sixty Years 

and assigns, are hereby made a corporation, by the name 
of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, for the 
purpose of assisting enigrants to settle in the West ; and, 
for this purpose, they shall have all the powers and privi- 
leges, and be subject to all the duties, restrictions, and 
liabilities, set forth in the thirty-eighth and forty-fourth 
chapters of the Revised Statutes. 

Sect. II. The capital stock of said corporation shall 
not exceed five millions of dollars. Said capital stock 
may be invested in real and personal estate : provided, 
the said corporation shall not hold real estate in this 
Commonwealth to an amount exceeding twenty thou- 
sand dollars. 

Sect. III. The capital stock of said corporation shall 
be divided into shares of one hundred dollars each ; but 
no more than four dollars on the share shall be assessed 
during the year eighteen hundred and fifty-four, and no 
more than ten dollars on the share shall be assessed in 
any one year thereafter. 

Sect, IV. At all meetings of the stockholders, each 
stockholder shall be entitled to cast one vote for each 
share held by him : provided, that no stockholder shall 
be entitled to cast more than fifty votes on shares held 
by himself, nor more than fifty votes by proxy. 

Sect. V. This act shall take effect from and after its 
passage. 

The boldness of this proposal at once arrested 
attention, and the act was printed in all parts of 
the country. In point of fact, none of the 
Western work was eventually done under its 
provisions. It exists as a splendid monument of 



Colonization of Kansas 263 

the prompt action of the State of Massachusetts ; 
but the subsequent action of the friends of Kansas 
and Nebraska was taken under other arrangements 
for incorporation. All the same, it did what it 
was meant to do. The word ran through the 
country, North and South, that Massachusetts 
was going to place five million dollars in the 
new territory, and was going to send men there 
who would know how to spend it. Attention was 
immediately arrested upon the possibilities of 
emigration into the beautiful region west of 
Missouri — emigration which would be real emi- 
gration, and which would keep out the threatened 
invasion of slaveholders with their slaves. 

The names given as petitioners for this corpora- 
tion are enough to show how thoroughly the best 
life of Massachusetts engaged itself in the great 
enterprise. 

Benjamin C. Clark was a philanthropic merchant 
whose name in the next generation has been iden- 
tified with prompt action for the help of suffering 
and poverty. 

Isaac Livermore was a leading merchant in 
Boston, at the head of that department of busi- 
ness which deals in wools. 

Charles Allen was for years a member of Con- 
gress from the Worcester district. He had been a 
judge of high rank in Massachusetts, and was 
universally respected. 

Stephen C. Phillips was for many years the 
representative in Congress from the Essex district. 



264 Sixty Years 

Charles C. Hazewell was a distinguished writer 
for the press. 

Alexander H. Bullock is the same who was 
governor of Massachusetts in the years 1866-68. 

Henry Wilson was to be the Vice-President of 
the United States. 

Samuel E. Sewall had been a leader in the aboli- 
tion movement from the beginning. 

Samuel Griswold Howe was the founder of the 
Institution for the Blind in Boston; an early 
friend of Greece in her struggles ; always in the 
advance where effort was needed for the rights of 
men. 

Otis Rich was a member of the Massachusetts 
House of Representatives ; he was chairman of the 
committee who reported the charter. 

Moses Kimball was a leader in the Whig Party; 
at this time a member of the State Senate. For 
many years after this time he was the most prom- 
inent member of the House of Representatives of 
Massachusetts. 

James D. Green was a member of the House, 
afterwards the mayor of Cambridge. 

Francis W. Bird was a noble type of a class of 
men, fortunately leaders in Massachusetts, who 
are themselves entirely indifferent to public office 
or public honor, but who are determined that Mas- 
sachusetts shall do right and shall lead. Mr. Bird 
was prominent in the Anti-slavery party of that 
time. 

Otis Clapp, born of the best blood of New Eng- 



Colonization of Kansas 265 

land, was member of the House, a merchant in 
Boston, whose name was identified with efforts 
for temperance and good government. 

Anson Burhngame was the same who went to 
Washington the next year and challenged Preston 
Brooks, the would-be assassin who had struck 
Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber. Brooks 
declined the challenge. 

These names, probably, are simply the first 
fifteen names by which Mr. Thayer could readily 
head his petition. It is almost safe to say that the 
first fifteen men in Massachusetts whom he could 
have asked would have joined him. The plan, 
however, was his, and for a long time the work 
was his. This list brings together persons who 
had acted in very different ways in opposition to 
slavery. Some of them took no active part in the 
subsequent movement. Among these were Mr. 
Sewall and Mr. Bird; excepting them the list 
includes the names of none of those whom we 
now call the old Anti-slavery war-horses. Those 
gentlemen distrusted any action which did not 
look to the destruction of the Union. The gentle- 
men whose names Mr. Thayer brought together in 
this act of incorporation which is now historical, 
were willing to meet the general government on 
its own terms, which already foreshadowed what 
was known as " squatter sovereignty." With names 
as suggestive as these of the determination of the 
State, Mr. Thayer, whose own name is last but one 
upon the list, presented it to the House of Rcpre- 



266 Sixty Years 

sentatives, in which he was a member from the city 
of Worcester. 

The bill asked for went immediately through the 
requisite forms. The charter of the Massachusetts 
Emigrant Aid Company was signed by Governor 
Washburn on the 26th of April, and took effect 
immediately. The moral effect of this act througli 
the whole country can hardly be described. It 
cannot be overstated. It was like what one sees, 
when, at a given moment, watched for and prayed 
for, a great vessel, which seems likely to miss stays 
in her voyage, feels, happily, one strong gust of a 
favoring gale, and sweeps forward in her career as 
her master has determined. Instantly, through 
the whole North, it was known through every eager 
hamlet that Massachusetts had taken up the glove 
which in Washington had been thrown down. 
Massachusetts was about to send twenty thousand 
freemen into Kansas, and to spend five million 
dollars in establishing them there. It may be 
observed that the charter for this company passed 
the hand of the Governor of Massachusetts and 
received her great seal on the 26th day of April. 
The act, under which Kansas and Nebraska were 
created territories, was not approved by Franklin 
Pierce, the President, until the 30th of May.^ On 
the 4th of May the petitioners who have been 

^ It is an interesting note of the public opinion of the time 
regarding a person now well-nigh forgotten, that in the volume 
which I take from the Boston Public Library to verify the dates 
in the statement above, I find this memorandum written by some 



Colonization of Kansas 267 

named met at the State House in Boston and 
accepted their charter. Massachusetts may be 
said then to have picked up the gauntlet before 
it was thrown down. 

When the corporators accepted this charter, 
they appointed a committee to report a plan of 
organization; this committee consisted of Eli 
Thayer, Alexander H. Bullock, Richard Hildrcth, 
the editor of the Boston Atlas, Otis Clapp, of 
Boston, and myself. They submitted a report at 
an adjourned meeting, held in Boston, This 
report showed how large was the movement of 
emigrants into the country at that time, the 
arrivals the preceding year having been four 
hundred thousand. It showed the necessity of 
provision for those persons at the West, and said 
that the Emigrant Aid Company was ready to 
send out emigrants in companies to establish 
themselves in Kansas. It recommended that the 
directors contract immediately with some one of 
the competing lines of travel for the conveyance 
of twenty thousand persons from Massachusetts 
to that place in the West which the directors 

reader and critic against the name of Franklin Pierce, the Presi- 
dent : " To whom Arnold was an angel of light." 

The other names signed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act are, 
Linn Boyd, then Speaker of the National House of Representa- 
tives, and Dr. R. Atchison, President of the Senate. The Kansas- 
Nebraska Act was always called in New England The Kansas Bill, 
as to this day The Fugitive Slave Law is generally called The 
Fugitive Slave Bill. This is the tacit intimation that to the moral 
sense of New England no formalities could ever make these bills 
into laws. 



268 Sixty Years 

should select for their first settlement. It stated 
the belief of the writer that individuals could go 
in such companies for half-price; it recommended 
the establishment of saw-mills, grist-mills, and a 
weekly newspaper. And in the fourth article it 
recommended that, " Whenever the territory shall 
be organized as a free State, the directors shall 
dispose of all its interests there, replace by sales 
the money laid out, declare a dividend to the 
stockholders, and that they then select a new field 
and make similar arrangements for the settlement 
and organization of another free State in this 
Union." 

This report of the Emigrant Aid Company 
was drawn by myself. I had the advantage of 
the fullest conference with Mr. Thayer, and it 
is evident that I used his brief above in the 
preparation of the report. It was printed at 
once with an account of the territory to be 
colonized which had been prepared five years 
before by Dr. Charles Robinson, a physician of 
Fitchburg, It makes the first issue of a report 
on Nebraska and Kansas, which was afterward 
published almost monthly for two or three years. 

The first charter not proving satisfactory, the 
subscriptions which were at once received were 
placed for temporary use in the hands of three 
trustees who acted for some months as the 
representatives of the subscribers without any 
legal incorporation. When the great State of 
Kansas shall have time to erect in her Capitol a 



Colonization of Kansas 269 

group of the statues of her founders, these three 
must hold distinguished places there. First and 
foremost in the group will be Eli Thayer. He 
conceived the plan of organized emigration; he 
drew the petition for a charter ; he carried the 
charter through; he obtained the requisite funds 
for a beginning; and, in a word, until Kansas was 
a free State, he gave his time, his money, and his 
h'fe to the establishment of freedom. His two 
associates in the difficult and delicate work of the 
first summer were Amos A. Lawrence and James 
M. S. Williams. Mr. Lawrence was at this time 
forty years old. He was at the head of the great 
manufacturing house which had been established 
by Abbott Lawrence and Amos Lawrence, 
mentioned elsewhere in this volume. By that 
house the city of Lawrence, on the Merrimac 
River, had been created, and from them it had 
received its name. Mr. Lawrence at once put 
himself in communication with Mr. Thayer, 
subscribed largely to the new enterprise, and 
was eventually made the treasurer of the com- 
pany. Mr. J. M. S. Williams, of the business 
firm of Glidden & Williams, was a Virginian by 
birth. All the more he detested slavery and its 
methods. Mr. Thayer and he worked together 
in entire sympathy; and until Kansas was free 
Mr. Williams might be relied upon for counsel 
or for money. 

These three gentlemen, during the whole of the 
eventful and critical summer of 1854, directed the 



270 Sixty Years 

payment of money and the employment of 
agents for the work in hand. No time was lost. 
Dr. Charles Robinson, of Fitchburg, who had 
been an early settler in California, and had 
distinguished himself there in the early history 
of that State, reported almost immediately to 
Mr. Thayer. Dr. Robinson gave to Mr. Thayer 
information with respect to the physical aspect 
of Kansas, through which he had himself travelled 
in one of his journeys to California. Mr. Thayer 
at once printed extracts from Dr. Robinson's 
journal of that time, and sent him out, incognito 
as might be said, as an agent in advance, to see 
what spots would be good spots to occupy. 
Dr. Robinson's journal shows that he was in 
Kansas as early as July, 1854; that is to say, 
within six weeks of the passage of the Act 
by which the territory was thrown open to 
settlement. 

An Indian reservation, just west of what is now 
known as Kansas City, compelled him to go nearly 
forty miles back in the territory for the selection of 
a proper site for the first colony. This site he deter- 
mined upon, and here stands the city of Lawrence 
at the present time. He also advised the trustees 
to purchase an old tavern which was in the infant 
town of Kansas City. It was just within the Mis- 
souri border, but it would serve as a convenient 
place for the settlers to meet in and move from, 
where everything would be courteous and kindly 
to them, and free from the danger of an unfriendly 



Colonization of Kansas 271 

local feeling. This property, first to be obtained, 
was one of the last properties held by the Emigrant 
Aid Company. 

Dr. Robinson returned to St. Louis with the 
information gained, and on the i8th of July, 1854, 
a pioneer party of thirty-five persons left Boston. 
They arrived at St. Louis on the 24th of July, and 
located at the position of Lawrence on the i8th of 
August. They described their new home as " six 
miles above the mouth of the Wakarusa, a tribu- 
tary of Kansas River." The second party left 
Boston on the 29th of August, a third on the 26th 
of September; the fourth party left on the 17th of 
October, and the fifth on the 7th of November. 
The first four of these parties numbered about five 
hundred people. Most of them established them- 
selves at Lawrence, where they made temporary 
houses, largely underground, and prepared for the 
first winter. Explorations, however, were already 
in progress, which led to the establishment of 
other towns by the people of Massachusetts. 

The after history of these colonists from Massa- 
chusetts belongs to the history of Kansas, and is 
not to be related in these pages. An interesting 
review of the relations of the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany to Kansas, as seen by a gentleman who is 
closely acquainted with the history of that State, 
will be found in the New England Magazine for 
1897. It is written by Professor William H. 
Carruth, of the University of Kansas, and states 
with a certain humor and with great accuracy the 



272 Sixty Years 

results in Kansas of the prompt action of the 
company here. Our business is rather with the 
movement in Massachusetts. 

Under the inspiration of Mr. Thayer and of his 
friends, " Kansas Meetings " were held in almost 
all the large towns of New England and New 
York. The whole sentiment of the press was 
favorable to the movement. The committee of 
Congress, under the direction of Stephen A. 
Douglas, who reported on this subject, ascribed 
this movement to a desire to make profit on the 
part of New Englanders. On the other hand, this 
is certain that when, on February 7, 1862, the 
company sold all its property in Kansas for an 
amount of money which paid its various debts 
there, no stockholder ever made any complaint of 
the loss of his investment. The largest subscribers 
to the fund in the year 1854, were: Donald 
McKay, John Milton Forbes, J. M. S. Williams, 
G. Rowland and Frank G. Shaw, C. H. Mills & 
Co., John Bertram, EH Thayer, Samuel Cabot, 
Glidden Williams, William S. Rotch, Geo. W. 
Rowland, and Charles Francis Adams. These 
and about two hundred others made up the total 
stock of the company subscribed in that year, 
amounting to about $30,000. Eventually, the 
amount of stock, according to Mr. Carruth, was 
$136,000. The stock was taken very often in 
single shares, and the shares were worth twenty 
dollars each. This stock was subscribed not by 
emigrants, but by persons determined to help the 



Colonization of Kansas 273 

plan forward. The subscribers directed the move- 
ments of the company. 

The leaders of companies were in almost every 
instance men of enthusiasm, of good position at 
home, who had determined for years that the South- 
ern supremacy in the councils of the nation should 
be destroyed. They saw that this was a favorable 
opportunity to act in that way. Such a man 
would announce that he was going to Kansas, and 
would collect around him a company of his neigh- 
bors who were disposed to go. Such companies 
were collected of persons with every motive, but 
in general no person went who was not of strong 
anti-slavery sentiment, and who was not ready to 
risk something in the establishment of that senti- 
ment in Kansas. The Emigrant Aid Company 
was able to make low rates for tickets, so that any 
settler who went from New England to Kansas 
would be apt to go under its auspices. The com- 
pany hoped at first to obtain these tickets at half- 
price; it hardly ever succeeded in this hope, but 
in no instance did tickets sold at the offices of the 
company cost so much as those sold in the general 
market. There is a good story told, undoubtedly 
true, that Governor Walker, the pro-slavery gov- 
ernor sent out by President Pierce, and his secre- 
tary bought their tickets west at an Emigrant Aid 
Company's office, and obtained the reduction 
which the company made. It was absolutely true 
that no questions were asked any settler as to the 
motives with which he went, nor was a cent ever 

18 



2/4 Sixty Years 

given to a settler for the purpose of assisting him. 
What the company did give was, free information 
at its offices in the East, and the use, almost free, 
of its hotels and other places of reception in the 
territory and in Missouri. It also established at 
various centres steam saw-mills, which were nec- 
essary for the building up of a town in a region 
where there was so little water-power, and where 
timber was to be found only in favored localities. 
One of the hand-bills of the time, calling for mass- 
meetings in the East to further the objects of the 
Emigrant Aid Company, was headed, " Saw-mills 
and Liberty ! " The company also established 
two newspapers in Kansas, one in the German 
language. 

In the winter of 1854-55 a new charter was 
obtained for the " New England Emigrant Aid 
Company." This company was organized at 
once, on the fifth of March. It assumed all the 
obligations which had been incurred by the three 
trustees who had so loyally stood in the breach 
after the formation. John Carter Brown, of Prov- 
idence, was chosen President ; Eli Thayer and 
J. M. S. Williams were Vice-Presidents ; Amos 
A. Lawrence was Treasurer, and Thomas H. 
Webb, Secretary. Twenty-one directors were 
chosen, who appointed an executive committee 
of five, beside the treasurer. This committee, 
annually renewed, became the moving power in 
the company. The first year it consisted of Mr. 
Williams, Mr. Thayer, Dr. Cabot, of Boston, John 



Colonization of Kansas 275 

Lowell, of Boston, now United States District Judge, 
and Mr, R. P. Waters, a Salem merchant. The first 
step was taken. The North and the South alike 
had been notified that the people of the North 
meant to take possession of Kansas, and to make 
it a free State. Mr. Stephen A. Douglas had now 
avowed himself a patron of " squatter sovereignty," 
which meant that the people of the territory should 
themselves determine its institutions. If, then, 
the North poured in a sufficient number of emi- 
grants opposed to slavery, the battle was won. In 
point of fact, the North did this. Local wars took 
place between the territory of Kansas and the 
State of Missouri. The hotel of the Emigrant Aid 
Company in Lawrence, by far its most costly 
property, was taken possession of under the indict- 
ment of a pretended grand jury, and was burned. 
The company, to this hour, has its claim against 
the general government for having directed this 
sacrifice, the largest loss which the company ever 
sustained. 

With the acceptance, by the old subscribers, of 
the new charter of the New England Emigrant Aid 
Company, all of them took shares in that com- 
pany to the amount of their subscription. Up till 
that time — namely, the spring of 1855 — about 
thirty thousand dollars had been subscribed and 
spent. 

In the end, the company, in February, 1862, sold 
its property in Kansas. In other years it did some 
work in Texas, sent some emigrants to Oregon, and 



276 Sixty Years 

it sent many thousand men into Florida at the close 
of the war. 

In the great crisis of 1854 and 1855 New Eng- 
land was awakened to thorough enthusiasm. No 
American, indeed, is more than a few generations 
from a log cabin, and the passion for emigration is 
easily aroused. When President Garfield worked 
out his own genealogy he found that from Ensign 
Garfield who settled at Watertown in 1630, to 
Abram Garfield, who removed to Cuyahoga 
County in 1830, every Garfield had moved his 
home farther westward, and that each one had 
settled on new land granted for military service. 
Men of such blood were not terrified by fears 
of log cabins or prairie wolves. The practical 
bent of New England which unites so curiously 
with its idealism was interested in a project which 
proposed to settle the slavery question, without 
more talk, by as simple a process as that which 
had established freedom of religion, when such 
freedom was endangered by Laud or Wentworth 
or Charles. 

Whittier, the Quaker poet, wrote an emigrant 
song, which was sung not only at Kansas meetings, 
but on the platforms of railway stations, as emi- 
grant parties started, and on the decks of steam- 
boats or in the dark evenings in railway carriages, 
after they were well on their way. 

So soon as the first parties went forward, their 
letters home were printed in the newspapers, or 
passed from hand to hand. The hardships which 



Colonization of Kansas 277 

they met seemed to stimulate enthusiasm. And 
the insolence by which the men of Western 
Missouri interfered with the rights assured by 
" squatter sovereignty," roused that indignation 
through the country which never slept until 
Lincoln was chosen president. 

Each company generally comprised several in- 
dividuals, or, perhaps, several families, from the 
same town. Wherever one or two people pro- 
posed to emigrate, they would be apt to ask that 
a speaker might be sent to them from the Emi- 
grant Aid Company, or from some Kansas League. 
He carried with him his map, he explained the 
situation, he described the wonderful charms of 
the maiden territory, and of course he dwelt on 
the great political necessity of the hour. In such 
a meeting there would probably be one or two 
persons of intelligence who commanded the re- 
spect of their neighbors and they would organize 
the party, so far as it had any organization. The 
Emigrant Aid Company's office was a centre of 
information, of conversation among those who 
wished to go, and was made a bureau for their 
correspondence and intercourse. Dr. Thomas H. 
Webb, by a fortunate selection, was appointed 
the secretary of the three trustees who have been 
spoken of. He was secretary of the company 
until his death, after it closed all connection with 
Kansas, a period, as it proved, of many years. 
The office was in the third story of the building 
still standing at the corner of Winter and Wash- 



2/8 Sixty Years 

ington streets. There are many points in this 
world marked with bronze or marble memorials, 
in memory of historical events, less important 
than some which had their origin here. 

Here John Brown, of the Adirondacks, of 
Ossawatomie, and at last of Harper's Ferry, made 
his headquarters in Boston when he came to the 
East. With his adventures in Virginia the com- 
pany had no connection, and to many, perhaps 
most, of its ofificers the news of his first success at 
Harper's Ferry came as an entire surprise. But 
here, undoubtedly, he met with gentlemen of New 
England who sympathized in his bold adventure, 
were willing to see the experiment tried, and sup- 
plied the means. 

To this office came day after day any persons 
who had heard of Kansas, and wanted to try the 
great adventure. As in all enterprises, there were, 
of course, multitudes of those who wanted to keep 
books and conduct correspondence at home, while 
men of bolder spirit should fight the battles of free- 
dom. But here came also enough of those who 
were determined to go, and went. Here the large 
body of directors used to meet once a quarter. 
The executive committee met once a week, and 
as much oftener as the secretary needed them. 
A quorum could be collected at an hour's notice, 
and often was. There are great difficulties always 
where by any misfortune a " Directory " has to 
serve as an executive. I have never known such 
difficulties so surmounted and controlled as they 



Colonization of Kansas 279 

were in the organization of this board. I should 
recommend its plan to any persons in America 
placed in similar circumstances. 

The prominent active members during the critical 
years from 1854 to 1859 were first the three trustees 
who have been named, w^ith the omnipresent Mr. Eli 
Thayer always acting as chairman. His energy 
and confidence always gave courage to his com- 
panions, even under circumstances of the most 
severe depression. To him is ascribed, correctly 
or not, the authorship of the saying, " Personal 
presence moves the world." Certainly his habit 
and his success justified it. 

With these gentlemen there acted on the exec- 
utive committee, from time to time, Dr. Samuel 
Cabot, Jr., Hon. John Lowell, R. P. Waters, Dr. 
Le Baron Russell, Mr. C. J. Higginson, Martin 
Brimmer and George L. Stearns. Every stock- 
holder who made a large subscription was placed 
on the board of directors, which appointed this 
executive committee. 

The three trustees, for their first year's enter- 
prise, had, as has been said, but little more than 
thirty thousand dollars to use. If the Northwest- 
ern world of America had not credited them with 
five million dollars, their efforts would have been 
puny indeed and futile. But they and the com- 
pany after them had the country's exuberant con- 
fidence. Agents went with each party. Women 
and children could be sent forward to join their 
fathers or brothers who had gone before them. 



28 o Sixty Years 

It is worth notice, indeed, that these were the first 
of those " personally conducted journeys " of 
tourists which have since taken a part so impor- 
tant in our modern civilization. 

Meanwhile at home it might be said that the 
propaganda sustained itself, and grew by its 
success. The different speakers at the Kansas 
meetings paid their own expenses and never 
expected and never received any compensation. 
Authentic news from Kansas was the most inter- 
esting news which the journals could publish, so 
that there was no need to subsidize the press of 
New England. On this point I have a right to 
speak with some interest, as I was for some years 
a director of what might be called the Press 
Bureau of the company. At one time I was not 
so much the Kansas correspondent as the Kansas 
editor of eight leading journals in New England 
and New York, in each of which my articles were 
always printed as if they were editorials. About 
once in two months Dr. Webb published a new 
edition of " Information for Emigrants," leaving 
out what was obsolete in the old numbers and 
inserting what was more important or new. This 
series, now very rare and curious, ran through 
about twenty numbers. 

The necessity of introducing steam power in the 
territory soon became evident. Liberal men in 
Massachusetts would give ten thousand dollars 
each to send out an engine, in answer to an appeal 
for saw-mills and liberty. Hon. William Claflin 



Colonization of Kansas 281 

was such a benefactor. Hon. Tyler Bacheller was 
another. 

Hon. John Carter Brown, of Providence, the 
head of the great house of Brown, was the first 
person who subscribed a sum so large. Mr. 
Brown had just before printed, at his own expense, 
a new edition of the forgotten pamphlet, which 
described the effort of Virginia to throw off slavery 
in 1823. No publisher in Boston or New York 
dared put his imprint on a pamphlet so unpopular, 
in the days when Anti-slavery was disapproved in 
publishing circles, and Mr. John Carter Brown, 
the millionaire of Providence, was his own pub- 
lisher. When, in 1855, ^^^ New England Emigrant 
Aid Company was organized, the stockholders 
were glad to recognize the courage and the gen- 
erosity of such a man, and chose him their presi- 
dent. Their president he remained through the 
five years of the struggle. In the summer of 
1859, however, it had become certain that Kansas 
would be a free State. Mr. Brown wrote to the 
secretary that he did not like to hold a position 
almost nominal and ornamental, and that he wished 
his name might be withdrawn whenever the next 
company election came. The letter was received 
with regret by the executive committee, but they 
had no right to persuade him to do otherwise 
after service so valuable. 

Nor was it necessary. Early in October John 
Brown, of Ossawatomie, failed in his mad attempt 
at Harper's Ferry, and was taken prisoner. Half 



282 Sixty Years 

the conservatism of the North was eager to dis- 
avow his plans. No man in America was abused 
as he was, called here a madman and there a 
traitor. At such a moment John Carter Brown, 
the millionaire of Providence, leader in its society, 
in its commerce, in the counsels of the University, 
wrote to the secretary of the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany to beg that he might withdraw his letter of 
resignation. " This is no time," he said, " for any 
man who bears the honored name of John Brown 
to seem to shrink from his responsibilities in the 
cause of human freedom." 

No other being in the world remembered that 
the same name was borne by the captive in a Vir- 
ginia prison, and by the president of the New 
England Emigrant Aid Company. But he re- 
membered it. And his remembrance makes it 
one of the most honored names in the history of 
New England, 

Without alluding to the civil war which began 
in Kansas almost immediately, in which armed 
parties from Missouri attempted to break up the 
colonies of real settlers, we must hastily follow the 
work through and in Massachusetts in the years 
before 1861, when Kansas became a free State. 
The organization of emigrant parties continued 
under the same general arrangement as has been 
described until nearly five thousand emigrants 
passed from New England into Kansas, As early 
as the spring of 1855 it was evident that these 
men would have to fight for their rights, and from 



Colonization of Kansas 283 

the office of the company the first consignment of 
one hundred Sharp's rifles was sent out to them 
in May of that year. The fear that the boxes 
would be recognized as they crossed Missouri was 
such that care was taken that in no case should 
the whole of a rifle be found in one box; and, in 
fact, they arrived in different consignments at 
Lawrence, and were put together there. 

Kansas Aid Societies, or Kansas Leagues, were 
established in different towns ; Mr, Thayer refers 
especially to one in Albany, one in Worcester. 

In Kansas and Missouri, at the same time, 
rewards were offered for Mr, Thayer's head. Mr. 
Thaj'^er himself was engaged in going from place 
to place in collecting funds for the great enter- 
prise. In the city of New York, where a society 
had been established, he was cordially met by 
George VV. Blunt and by William M. Evarts, and 
others. Mr. Evarts made a speech in which he 
said he was worth but four thousand dollars, and 
would give a thousand dollars of it to the new 
enterprise. A National Kansas Committee was 
appointed under Mr. Thayer's advice at a conven- 
tion in Buffalo. The Fremont canvass of 1856 
came on, and in that election Mr, Thayer was 
himself chosen to Congress. 

The movement became general through all the 
Northern States. The share of it to be recorded 
in a history of the New England States is this: 
After the year 1854, of which an account has been 
already given, in the face of the internal struggles 



284 Sixty Years 

in Kansas, of the certainty that men must protect 
their rights by force of arms until Kansas was free, 
the emigration from New England went steadily 
forward. In the years which followed, in succes- 
sive parties such as have been described, the Emi- 
grant Aid Company sent forward, as has been 
said, between four and five thousand men, women, 
and children. These settlers established the towns 
of Lawrence, Topeka, Ossawatomie, Manhattan, 
Wabaunsee, and Burlington. One of its latest acts 
was to obtain what was supposed to be a controlling 
interest in the newly-born city of Atchison. That 
name has become a name of joy and sorrow to so 
many persons since, that it may be worth while to 
say that it was given by the pro-slavery founders 
of Atchison in compliment to Mr. Atchison, the 
senator from Missouri, who was the most vehe- 
ment spokesman of the Southern sentiment in all 
the Kansas discussions. After some years of 
struggle, these founders came to the Emigrant 
Aid Company, and offered to sell to it a controlling 
interest in the city, which it bought. Its directors 
voted that the name Atchison should be changed 
to VVilmot, Mr, Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, having 
been one of the first Democrats w^ho broke from 
his party; he moved the celebrated Wilmot Pro- 
viso in Congress. But the agents of the company 
in Atchison itself were never able to carry this 
broad resolution into effect. 

The Civil War began. In that war Kansas 
furnished a larger proportion of young men to the 



Colonization of Kansas 285 

Union army than did any other State. Her young 
men were used to fighting — it was their profession 
— and they went into the war for the Union as 
the legitimate, or indeed inevitable, sequel to the 
enterprise in which they had been engaged. By 
one of the early acts of Lincoln's first Congress, 
Kansas was admitted as a free State. The Emi- 
grant Aid Company then sold out all its property 
in Kansas to the firm of Adams & Ayling for 
some sixteen thousand, one hundred and fifty 
dollars. This was sufficient to pay its debts in 
the territory, and its official connection with 
Kansas ceased from that hour. 

But the individual directors of that company 
have always maintained an interest in the State in 
the foundation of which they had so important a 
share. And as Mr. Evarts said, as one of the 
early stockholders, no man who subscribed to the 
capital stock of the company has ever regretted 
his investment. 



A CHURCH IN THE WAR 



A CHURCH IN THE WAR 

In the year 1852 I married. In 1856 I accepted 
an invitation to become the minister of the South 
Congregational Church in Boston, as the successor 
of Rev. Frederick Dan Huntington, now the bishop 
of Central New York. 

There is a very pretty story about those days. I 
am going to tell it for the benefit of young min- 
isters. Dr. Huntington had one theological state- 
ment, and I had another. Dr. Huntington said this 
about certain things, and I said that. When 
Judge Sanger came to me with this " call," I said 
to him, " My dear fellow, I have just written a 
reply to Dr. Huntington's last article, and it will 
be printed next week. Now where would I be, 
and what would you do, if it were known that the 
man they had asked to be their minister had writ- 
ten a reply to an article by Dr. Huntington?'' 
And Judge Sanger replied, " Hale, none of them 
know that he has written the article, and none of 
them will know that you have written the reply." 
That is my warning to young men who think that 
the world is moved by intellectual convictions. 
Judge Sanger then went on, and said, " I suppose 

19 



290 Sixty Years 

you and Dr. Huntington differ in your theology? " 
Said I, " Oh, yes, by the whole world." " Well, I 
suppose so. I have heard it said so before," he 
went on ; " but, then, the people do not care any- 
thing about that. The people of the South Con- 
gregational Society believe that Huntington said 
the best thing he knew, and they believe that you 
will say the best thing you know." That is God's 
whole truth about the minister. Nobody but a 
fool expects to agree entirely with the utterances 
of the pulpit which he hears week after week 
and month after month and year after year. No 
one but a fool ever wants to agree with all the 
utterances of the pulpit. But what the people do 
want is to have a man say what he thinks, and to 
say it as well as he can, 

I had lived in Boston through my boyhood, and 
for one or two years when I was in college I had 
frequentl}^ attended Mr. Motte's church, of which 
I was now to be the minister. In the year 1840, 
when I was one of the first experimenters in the 
new-born daguerreotype, I took a daguerreotype of 
myself standing on the steps of the South Congre- 
gational Church. I believe that this was the first 
likeness of a human being thus taken in Massachu- 
setts. I adjusted the camera, saw that it should 
command the steps of the church, ran over and 
stood by one of the pillars, and bade my cousin, 
Francis Alexander Durivage, who was my friend 
and co-operator in this business, open and shut the 
lens. Unfortunately, I have not now this picture, 



A Church in the War 291 

which contained so curious a prophecy of my after- 
life. 

I was installed in the ministry of this church 
on the evening of Wednesday, October i, 1856. 
I have remained its minister until the year when I 
am writing these lines, but I lately sent in my 
resignation, which will take effect on the 1st of 
October, 1899. On my settlement I entirely 
revised the theory of ministerial life which I 
had laid down for myself when I went to 
Worcester. I knew it was impossible that I 
should be the minister of the town of Boston, and 
I resolved to make myself, as well as I could, sim- 
ply the minister of the South Congregational 
Church, 

From October, 1856, to April, 1861, I was true 
to this theory. True, I made Kansas speeches, 
but I made them at the South End, in the base- 
ment of my own church, I attended directors' 
meetings of the Emigrant Aid Company; but I 
tried to interest the people of my own church in 
the work which we were doing in Kansas. I re- 
member now that when I left Boston, because I 
was not well, in the second week of April, 1861, I 
did not believe there would be any armed contest. 
I told Amos Amory Lawrence, within a fortnight 
before that time, that this matter would never come 
to the clash of arms.^ But the war had come. On 

1 I remember meeting Wendell Phillips, after Fort Sumter was 
threatened, as I came out of church. I walked with him, and he 
said to me, " They have thrown up batteries against Fort Sumter." 



292 Sixty Years 

the morning of April 15th, Horatio Stebbins came 
to my door in his house at Portland, and told me 
that Sumter had been fired upon. With that shot 
a new issue began for all of us ; old things were 
done away, all things became new. 

I returned to Boston that afternoon. As I went 
home through Washington Street, the 7th Massa- 
chusetts was filing out from Boylston Hall to 
go to the steamboat which was to take it to Fort 
Monroe. Of course I said, as any true man would 
have said, " The South Congregational Church is 
simply one cell in the organized life of this nation. 
The cell need not exist if the nation ceased to 
exist." And, as every member of that church did, 
I threw myself into every effort for the national 
life. So soon as there was any recruiting, I urged 
on the young men of the congregation their duty 
to enlist. I said that the moment the enlistment 
from my church stopped, I should go myself; 
and I should have done so. I was already a mem- 
ber of Salignac's drill corps, and I advanced so far 
that I have the pleasure of saying that as a ser- 
geant in that corps I gave their first instructions to 
men who came out from the war with high rank. 
There is one major-general whom I never meet 
without our joking about the screws of his musket 
at " right shoulder shift." Whatever I could think 

I said, " Nonsense ! If they have thrown up batteries they have 
built tliem of the waves of the sea ! " — for I knew the harbor of 
Charleston. And Phillips said, " I hope it is so." This for a man 
who had thought he wanted to have the Union dissolved, seems 
to me a remark worth remembering. 



A Church in the War 293 

of which I could do for my country, I tried to do. 
And I may say the same thing of the church of 
which I am the minister. There was hardly a 
point in the country which this enterprising church 
did not touch in its activities in the war. Ladies 
sent down their sewing-machines to the vestry, and 
went to work them. In our archives is the receipt 
from the Commonwealth for the clothing made by 
three days' work, the i6th, 17th, and i8th of April. 
They began a series of army work which did not 
end until December 22, 1865. On that day Gov- 
ernor Andrew ordered a parade of our veteran reg- 
iments to bring their tattered banners home to the 
State House. I noticed, as I read my morning 
paper, that the column would pass our church. I 
sent to Mrs. Tilton, who was at the head of our 
Tea-Committee, to ask if the South Friendly So- 
ciety could give the boys coffee. She thought 
they could; and, when the column passed that 
cold morning, a thousand or two soldiers drank 
their hot coffee as they passed us, and took our 
last benediction. 



" The first teachers who went to Port Royal to 
teach blacks were my assistant and one of our 
Sunday-school teachers.^ The flannel shirts on the 
Missouri company who fell martyrs at Shiloh in the 

1 Rev. Charles E. Rich and Mr. Boynton. 



294 Sixty Years 

gray of the morning, and saved that day for the 
nation, were made in our vestry. The young men 
who first appeared in charge of a hospital steamer 
after the horrors of that eventful battle, were 
young physicians from our church, who had with 
them supplies which the church had forwarded. 
The editor of the first newspaper published in a 
rebel prison was one of our boys, who had volun- 
teered the first day, and had been taken prisoner 
at Bull Run. The news of the horrors of the 
second Bull Run came on Sunday morning. 
Ladies did not go home from the church, but 
staid in the vestries to tear bandages, to pack 
boxes, and see them forwarded by the right 
expresses. I have given notices from the pulpit 
that hospital attendants were needed by the 
Sanitary; and men have started the same even- 
ing on service which lasted for years. We once 
had from Richmond a private intimation of 
methods by which Union officers could be sup- 
plied with home stores. We needed a hundred 
and ten private letters written to as many Northern 
homes: I told this to the ladies of my staff; and 
the long letters were written and posted before 
night. I think — but am not certain — that the 
only ether and chloroform which came to the 
hospital in Richmond where Union officers were 
treated in the spring of 1864, was boxed and sent 
from this church. I know I superintended the 
packing of two or three boxes of playing-cards 
for our own hospitals at that time. All this time the 



A Church in the War 295 

system was going forward by which wc forwarded 
the stores to hospitals, and even regiments, which 
exigencies outside the regulations suddenly re- 
quired. And, when you go beyond what was 
physically done within those walls, there is no 
end to such stories. Men and women gave money 
like water. The words 'public spirit,' the ' public 
breath,' then got an interpretation and meaning 
they have never lost. God grant they never 
may ! " 

Thus much for what the church did for those 
who were fighting the battles. The list of our 
young men who went to fight them, besides 
those who served in the Sanitary Association and 
in the hospitals and schools, contains fifty-five 
names. I find three generals, three colonels, 
eight captains, besides officers of other grades, 
in that number. Of the fifty-five, seven were 
killed in battle. One regiment, the Forty-fourth 
Massachusetts, took, I think, sixteen of my boys. 

Think what an education this was for us all ! I 
remember saying, when one of the last quotas was 
to be filled, that I would preach of nothing but 
the duties of the war till the quotas were filled ; that 
when the young men tired of going, I would go 
myself, and leave them to do the preaching. Nor 
did I preach of anything else for that time. When 
things seemed to look blackest, President Lincoln 
used to proclaim a Fast; and such a Fast came on 
the 4th of August, 1864, in the middle of dog-days. 
Everybody of the congregation was out of town. 



296 Sixty Years 

But I came into town to the service ; and I stood 
up to preach from the text, " Kingdom shall be 
divided against kingdom, and nation against nation. 
But he that endureth to the end shall be saved." 
As I gave out the text, the sexton brought me a 
telegram in the pulpit. I said to myself, " If it is 
bad news, it may wait : if it is good news, I can 
wait." 

So, after the sermon, I opened the telegram, to 
find that it was from my friend Colonel Kinsman, 
who was on General Butler's staff. I had made his 
acquaintance on a visit to the army in the preceding 
spring. Colonel Kinsman had the charge of what 
were then called " contrabands," the refugee slaves ; 
and he had asked my advice as to sending on a 
number of the negro women for whom they had 
no employment, to find occupation in New Eng- 
land. I had consulted the directors of the Freed- 
men's Aid Society, of which I was president, and 
they had unanimously begged that no such course 
might be taken. They thought that these black 
people belonged at the South, and that withdraw- 
ing them from the South was contrary to the regu- 
lar course of emigration, and that the results, on 
every account, would be bad. I had accordingly 
written to Colonel Kinsman in this view, and sup- 
posed that it was shared by him and his com- 
mander. So, indeed, it was at the time ; but as the 
summer came on they had some sickness at Hamp- 
ton, and this telegram was to announce to me that 
on Sunday afternoon he would arrive in Boston 



A Church in the War 297 

in a steamer with fifty colored women, for whom 
he wanted homes in New England. I did not 
think it necessary to read it to the congregation, 
though I did read them in those days many 
matters of such practical import. I went down- 
stairs to find awaiting me in my study in the 
church, my loyal friend, Mrs. Samuel Cabot, of 
the Freedmen's Aid Society, who had received a 
duplicate of this despatch. 

Every director of the Freedmen's Aid Society 
was at that moment living in the country, taking 
the ordinary vacation outing to which Boston people 
are accustomed. Even the secretary of the society 
was away, and we knew he was. And, as I have 
said, the society had, without the least hesitation, 
determined that it was better not to have these 
people brought on. But here they were; and on 
conference with Mrs. Cabot, I called a meeting of 
the directors the next morning at the office. This 
was Friday morning. When they came, they were, 
on the whole, I think, the crossest set of people 
I ever saw. It was hot and sultry, their advice 
had been spurned ; they were organized to aid 
freedmen at the South, they had never meant to 
aid them to come to the North, and they were 
utterly inexperienced in the duty in hand. At 
the same time, many people of the kind who 
anticipate evil, thought that there would be a 
great popular outcry if we introduced fifty negroes 
into the town as competitors with the laboring 
people we had. All this, however, had nothing 



298 Sixty Years 

to do with the business. We had these people 
to take care of. I sent at once to the office of 
the Evening Transcript, which is the paper of 
Boston which goes into every civihzed house, this 
advertisement : 

" Two colored women, who wish places together in a 
family, will arrive on the steamer at Central Wharf Sunday 
afternoon. Any lady who would like to engage them will 
apply at the office of the Freedmen's Aid on Saturday." 

We sent the same information to the secretaries 
of all our branch societies in the towns within 
twenty miles of Boston. We did not dare say 
fifty people would arrive, because we knew woman- 
kind well enough to know that people who wanted 
help would wait till Monday if they thought fifty 
were coming but if they thought two were coming 
we knew they would apply for them at once ; and 
so it proved. 

I then sent for my excellent friend, Mr. Grimes, 
the pastor of the largest church of colored people 
in Boston. I told him what had happened, and 
told him that he and his people must be ready to 
entertain these strangers. I begged him to have 
a lunch and other physical entertainment in the 
vestry of his church on Sunday, and we arranged 
for the expense of this entertainment. I told him 
that if we could take them all there, and they 
could feel at home on Sunday, by Sunday night 
we would try to have homes for them. To this 
he very cordially assented, and the entertainment 



A Church in the War 299 

was prepared. I then gave Mr. Grimes a circular 
letter to every large hotel-keeper in Boston, telling 
what the exigency was. From that day to this I 
have rated those houses in my mind according as 
they agreed to take two, four, or six of our colored 
emigrants. I have never forgotten Mr. Parker's 
answer to it. " Tell Mr. Hale I will take six of the 
women, and should be glad to take sixty." I then 
sent for my own assistant, Rev. Mr. Torricclli, told 
him what had been done, and meanly and basely 
retired to my own country home. Observe, I did 
not have to preach on Sunday, because the church 
was closed for the summer vacation; practically, 
there was not a member of my parish in town. 

With the general feeling that all had been done 
which could be done, I left this business to Torri- 
cclli and the officers of the society, and heard no 
more about it till the next Tuesday. When I made 
my inquiry then as to what had become of Colonel 
Kinsman and his colored women, I learned that 
he had stopped in Philadelphia and New York on 
his way up, and that there the friends of the negro 
had met him in such numbers that he had, in fact, 
only brought thirty-five women to Boston. They 
had been delayed, and did not arrive till late on 
Sunday afternoon. The report made to me said 
that at that time Central Wharf was blocked with 
the elegant carriages of the suburban residents 
who had come from different homes around Bos- 
ton. Each carriage contained a lady who was 
determined to have two of those exiles. They 



300 Sixty Years 

rushed into the cabin of the steamboat, made 
such terms as they could with Colonel Kinsman 
and his women, took the women physically into 
their carriages and carried them to their respective 
homes. There were not women enough for the 
demand, nor nearly enough. The Freedmen's Aid 
ofiEice was open all day, and yet no black woman 
appeared there. Dr. Grimes's collation was ready 
all day, and no black woman from Hampton ate 
sandwich or drank coffee there. Nor did one of 
them, as I believe, appear at any hotel. 

What is more interesting to me, as a sort of high 
private in the business of philanthropic organiza- 
tion, is this: from that hour to this (1899) no one of 
those colored women has ever been, so far as I 
have heard, an applicant for charity in any form, 
or was ever heard of before any court or tribunal, 
or in any hospital or poorhouse. They fell upon 
the homes of New England as a benediction from 
the South, and they are only known to this hour 
by their fruits. It was a little shower of beneficent 
emigration which fell upon a dry soil, and prob- 
ably no one, excepting myself and Judge Kinsman, 
thought of the details in the next thirty years. 



We were all at work with the Sanitary Com- 
mission in Boston, — and with the National Society 
as well. Of course we shared in the enterprises 
by which men and women tried to help the navy. 



A Church in the War 301 

Once and again, as the four years of war ground 
their way along, I visited Washington, and so I saw 
the hospital life there, and at Alexandria, Early in 
1S64 I went to Fort Monroe, and there was the 
guest of General Butler. I had not long returned 
home when I received a telegram from his chief 
of staff, Colonel Shaffer, which had been sent 
from Bermuda Hundred. It contained the en- 
couraging words : 

" We are more successful than our hopes. 
Come on as soon as you can." 

I arranged " supplies " for my pulpit and joined 
General Butler at Bermuda Hundred, hoping until 
I came there that I might enter Richmond with 
them. Alas, ten months had to creep by before 
there was any entering of Richmond. 

As I passed through Washington, ' where we 
were all at home in the war, I went to the War 
Department, where the adjutant-general was an 
old schoolmate of mine. I was no stranger there 
then, and so it happened that he gave me a 
despatch for General Butler. This elevated me at 
once in the esteem of all chiefs of transportation, 
giving me I do not know how much power, but 
great prestige whenever I needed it. I went down 
to Fort Monroe at once, where I found only one 
or two of the gentlemen of the staff, chafing 
because they were not at the front; and on the 
government steamer of the next day I went up to 
Bermuda Hundred. 

We were rather more than half-way up when we 



302 Sixty Years 

were arrested for a little by the sound of firing on 
the shore. It proved that this was one of the 
days when Fitzhugh Lee had attempted to cut off 
General Butler's river communications. He had 
attacked the field works which we had on the 
south side of the river. As it happened, these 
works were held by negroes recruited in Virginia, 
and this was one of the earlier trials of those troops. 
After a little delay on this account, we pressed on, 
and just about at nightfall arrived at the crowded 
water-front of Bermuda Hundred. The whole 
army of 25,000 men had arrived there suddenly a 
fortnight before, as if it had fallen from the skies. 
In that time wharves and landing-places had been 
improvised with marvellous rapidity, and although 
there was endless confusion, still things seemed to 
go forward with the kind of energy which marks 
the work of a well-disciplined army. 

For me, I was as ignorant as a freshman is on 
entering college, of what I was to do. I knew that 
General Butler and his staff were six or seven 
miles away, I knew that night was falling, and I 
did not know how I was to go to him. Fortunately 
for me, as I thought, there was on the boat a 
member of his staff with whom I had some 
acquaintance, and I relied upon him to help me 
through. When we landed, however, he was out 
of the way, and I could not find him. I suspected 
that he did not care to embarrass himself with a 
civihan, and was intentionally keeping out of sight. 
I think so still. 



A Church in the War 303 

I therefore did what I ahvays do in hfc — struck 
as high as I could. I said to the sentinel that I 
was a bearer of despatches, and asked him the 
way to the headquarters of the commander of that 
post. Thirty years after, I learn that this gentle- 
man is Colonel Fuller of Massachusetts. He 
illustrated the courtesy and promptness of a man 
in command. He said at once that his own orderly 
should go with me to General Butler; that he 
would lend me his own horse; and would send 
my valise on the ambulance the next morning. 
So the horse was saddled, and about the time 
when it became quite dark the soldier and I 
started on our way. 

He knew no more of the way than I did, and a 
very bad way it was. I made my first acquaint- 
ance with the sacred soil of Virginia then and 
there. We lost ourselves sometimes, and then we 
found ourselves ; the greater part of the road being 
the worst possible country road, all cut to pieces 
by the heavy army work, through woods, not of 
large trees, but which were close enough on both 
sides to darken the passage. It was nine o'clock 
or later when we saw the welcome sight of the 
headquarters camp-fires. 

We rode up, and I jumped from my horse to 
shake hands with General Butler, Colonel Shaffer, 
and the other gentlemen. They asked instantly 
how we had passed the batteries. I told the story, 
and General Butler, who was always effusively 
polite, and to his other gracious ways added ex- 



304 Sixty Years 

quisite facility in flattery, said to me : " We are 
greatly obliged to you, Mr. Hale. I have been very 
anxious for two or three hours. I was afraid my 
despatches were cut off." I had already handed 
to him the utterly unimportant letter from the War 
Department, which had been my talisman thus far. 

Then and there I first heard soldiers talk of 
what had been done and what had not been done 
in that day. I knew beforehand that, in the push 
toward Richmond, we had been flung back at Fort 
Darling. I did not know, till I came there, exactly 
how the command was impressed by this delay. 
But in the headquarters circle I found nothing but 
confidence, and I very soon saw that I was to 
understand that we should have taken Richmond 
but for the heavy fog of the day of battle and 
some other infelicities. I think now that this is 
probably true. 

The fires were kept burning, and we sat and 
chatted there hour after hour. When we had 
been there perhaps two hours, up came my mili- 
tary friend of the general's staff, and with sufficient 
profanity exorcised the roads over which he had 
ridden. He had never been there before. Gen- 
eral Butler heard him through, and then said : 
" But here is Mr. Hale, who has been here two 
hours." The soldier turned on me, a little crest- 
fallen, — all the other members of the staff suffi- 
ciently amused — and asked me with another 
oath how I found the way. I said, "We followed 
the telegraph wire ; " and from that day I was 



A Church in the War 305 

rather a favorite with the staff for this civilian snub 
on a gentleman who was not a favorite. 

Meanwhile, somebody had been ordered to pitch 
a tent for me, and at about eleven o'clock, I sup- 
pose, I went to bed in my new quarters. I had 
slept an hour, however, as it proved, when I was 
awakened by the firing of cannon. I had never 
heard such firing; as it proved afterward, they 
were the heaviest guns which I have ever heard in 
my life. Of course I wanted to jump up, but I 
said to myself: " It will seem very green if I walk 
out on the first sound of firing. I suppose this is 
what I came to the front for. If they want me 
they will call me, and I shall hear firing enough 
before I have done." So I turned over and tried 
to go to sleep — did go to sleep — and was awak- 
ened again by louder and louder firing. All this 
lasted, I suppose, perhaps an hour, perhaps two. 
Then all was still, and I went to sleep for the night. 

You are wakened in camp, if you are at a major- 
general's, by the bugles of his cavalry escort, and 
the next morning I heard their reveille, also for 
the first time. I washed myself, was already 
dressed, of course, and in a little an orderly told 
me that breakfast was ready. I met at breakfast 
Captain Laurie, a fine old officer of the navy, 
whom I had known a little in Boston. He said to 
me, " And how did you like our firing last night. 
Mr. Hale?" I said, that to me, as a civilian, it 
seemed very loud, but I supposed that that was 
what I had come to the war for, and I did not get 



3o6 Sixty Years 

up from my bed. Laurie answered, as if he would 
rebuke me for my ignorance : " I have been in the 
service for thirty-nine years, and I never heard 
such firing before." I found then, for the first 
time, that the whole staff had been up and on 
horseback, had been at the front to try to find out 
what this firing was, and had returned almost as 
much perplexed as they went. 

It was thus that it happened to me that I spent 
my first and last battle in bed. 

I was acting on the principle of doing the duty 
which came next my hand, and obeying all orders 
which were given to me. I had not run away; I 
was pleased with that. And if I had not personally 
received the surrender of three or four battle-flags, 
that was my misfortune. 

I had occasion afterward to hear much of the 
testimony, and to read all the rest of it, which 
related to this remarkable battle. If you will read 
the history of the time, as told in the Richmond 
newspapers and those of New York city, and will 
put them together, you will learn that on that night 
a reconnoissance was sent out from our lines into 
the tangled shrubbery which separated our newly- 
built works from those of the rebels. You will 
learn that the rebel guns mowed down these col- 
umns as corn is mowed down before a tempest. 
Or, if you read a Northern newspaper, you will 
learn that a certain column of the rebel troops, 
who were named, were worse than decimated by 
similar artillery from our works. 



A Church in the War 307 

Every word of this was entirely false. In fact, 
there was a very heavy cannonading from the 
newly-erected works on both sides. As I have 
said, it lasted an hour or two. Much of it on our 
side was from heavy guns, which had been landed 
from the navy to strengthen the battery which we 
had near the river. But as the result of it, there 
was never any evidence that a rabbit was scratched. 
Certainly no drop of human blood was shed in 
that encounter of giants. 

How it happened so late in the evening I do not 
know. But what happened was this : A party of 
ladies had been entertained on board one of our 
ships of war. As they left, an officer, with the 
gallantry of his profession, asked one of the ladies 
if she would like to see how a gun was fired, and 
to do pleasure to her he fired one of the guns in 
the darkness. At that moment everything was on 
the qui vive ashore, and our land-battery men, 
eager for something to do, finding that one shot 
was fired, thought that another had better be fired, 
and continued the firing. This started the succes- 
sive artillerists for nearly a mile, as our works ran 
up into the country toward the Appomattox river, 
and not to be belated or accused of sleepiness, they 
began firing in turn. Of course this roused the 
equally ready artillerists on the rebel side, and they 
fired, I suppose, at the flashes which they saw a 
mile or two away. And this was the famous can- 
nonade which made the whole of my first battle. 

The naval officers were dreadfully mortified, our 



308 Sixty Years 

gentlemen at headquarters were indignant beyond 
account, and the thing almost came to courts 
martial and courts of inquiry. But it was wisely 
thought better to leave the record of it to be made 
at the end of thirty years by the only person who 
was at all concerned, who spent the hours of the 
battle in his bed under canvas. 

It was almost of course that this interest in the 
nation should show itself in print. In the sum- 
mer of 1863 I wrote for the Atlantic the story 
of " A Man Without a Country," which has been 
already published in this series, and after that time 
I wrote regularly for that magazine for many years. 
Till the war ended, indeed, it was my special duty 
to furnish for successive numbers what would 
" keep people in good spirits about public affairs" 
— as Mr. Field, the editor, said to me in engaging 
me to do so. 

To my interest in that sort of work I owe the 
great satisfaction that I am an honorary member 
of the Loyal Legion of Massachusetts, chosen by 
the active members in recognition of service which 
they suppose I rendered in the war. 

Peace came with the fall of Richmond. I re- 
member I wrote to my dear friend, Mr. Benjamin 
J. Lang, the morning we had the news, that I had 
instructed the sexton to open the church, that I 
hoped Lang would be there in the afternoon to 
conduct the musical service, and that if no one 
else was there he and I would be there and we 
would thank God that peace had returned. 



A Church in the War 309 

The church had been built in the first year of 
the war. Behind the pulpit was a painting copied 
from the cherubs of Murillo's " Assumption." 
They bore in their arms the motto, " Glory to 
God in the highest." With the victory at Rich- 
mond we sent for the decorator, and permitted 
him to add the other ribbon, with the words " On 
earth peace, good will among men." 



EDITORIAL DUTY 



EDITORIAL DUTY 

It was in the town of Boston that the first news- 
paper in America was printed. The Httle sheet 
has been reprinted often in good fac-similes. It 
is a curious iUustration of the hopes of the 
journals of that day, and of their disadvantages 
as well. The Boston News-Letter^ as it was called, 
was generally printed on two pages only of a large 
folio sheet, of which the other two pages were left 
white. It was supposed that this was to be really 
a news-letter; the merchant who had a correspon- 
dent abroad would write him on the blank pages 
as to their special affairs, while at the same time 
he sent him the general news of the town. The 
whole form of the News-Letter, for more than a 
generation, bears out this idea. Indeed, the 
editorial " we," which is so badly used by many 
writers now, expressed in those days to a certain 
extent the knowledge and sentiment of a consid- 
erable part of the community. For instance, they 
said," We have news from London up to the i ith ; " 
they meant that the people of Boston had such 
news. Or, " We have heard that the Indians burned 
a village in New Hampshire." They did not mean 



3 1 4 Sixty Years 

simply that that office had heard it, but that the 
people of Boston had received the news. To say, 
" We have seen a handsome hat in the shop of 
Jones & Co.," would have been inconceivable in 
the office of a journal printed as the News-Letter 
was printed, 

Franklin's autobiography gives some interesting 
hints as to the journalism of that time. James 
Franklin had Benjamin as an apprentice in the 
publication of the New England Courant, which 
was a rival to the Boston News-Letter. 

From such simple beginnings the journalism of 
the town had hardly emerged at the beginning of 
this century. The News-Letter\i2i6i given place to 
the Chronicle and the Centinel. The blank sheet 
was no longer left for the merchant to write upon, 
except that this convenient custom has maintained 
its place till within a few years in the publication 
of " price-current " sheets, which were issued sepa- 
rately from the principal newspaper offices. These 
sheets will be quite within the memory of the Bos- 
ton merchants of to-day. In a convenient form, 
they gave the same price-current as is now printed 
daily, made up with the rates at which merchandise 
closed on the day of publication, and two large 
pages of letter-paper were still open for private 
correspondence. 

The great convenience of affecting the public 
mind by articles printed in the news-letters and 
newspapers, suggested itself, naturally, very early. 
And it would happen that, according to the pol- 



Editorial Duty 3 1 5 

itics of the coterie who surrounded the printer of 
a paper, that paper would be rather apt to print 
communications sent to it on one side or the other. 
For instance, in the conflicts before the Revohition 
the Massachusetts S/>j', then printed in Boston, was 
the organ to which the writers of the rebel school 
usually sent their papers, while the Weekly Adver- 
tiser would receive the writings of people who 
began to be called Tories. But in no case did 
the printer himself affect to write articles, any 
more than the newsboy who sells the Herald to-day 
pretends to control its editorial columns. Indeed, 
the presence of an editor in the concern was not 
known. 

Occasionally, however, a journal gained great 
fame by some series of contributed articles ; the 
fame of the Junius letters, published in the Public 
Advertiser of London, still survives, though very 
few persons have really read five of them. And 
in a town so small as Boston or New York then 
were, there was little room for enterprise or skill 
in the collection of news. The people who wanted 
news published brought it into the printing-office 
of the paper, much as a man who wanted a vessel in- 
sured carried that fact to the place where men 
were in the habit of meeting who vv^anted to insure 
vessels. 

When this century began, the town of Boston 
had a population of about twenty-five thousand 
persons. There were published here at that time 
two weekly journals, the Chronicle and the Coltmi- 



316 Sixty Years 

bian Centinel, and twice a week the Commercial 
Gazette. The Centinel had become the organ 
to which the Federahst writers sent their com- 
munications, while the Chronicle was the organ 
in the same way of the Democratic writers. Oc- 
casionally an effort would be made to introduce 
a new journal into the arena, but without any 
marked success, until, in the year 181 1, a coterie 
of the younger Federalist politicians determined 
on having a journal which should express their 
views more definitely and with more power than 
the Centinel. And, as a sort of club, these men 
met from day to day, and issued what they called 
the Boston Weekly Messenger. In this paper was 
the germ from which the Boston Daily Advertisery 
still published in this city, was born. 

The real moral and intellectual leader of this 
little company was John Lowell, son of the dis- 
tinguished Judge Lowell who introduced into the 
Bill of Rights the clause which freed every negro 
in Massachusetts. The younger of these two John 
Lowells, a lawyer of distinction, lived just outside 
Boston, in Roxbury, in a house still standing. 
Here, in an elegant hospitality, he received the 
best people of the time. With the advantages of 
wealth he carried on his studies of politics and 
society, and Roxbury was then so far a country 
town that when he chose to sign himself " A 
Norfolk County Farmer " in his political writings, 
he could do so fairly. Men now living remember 
his farming, in the shape of his elegant greenhouses 



Editorial Duty 317 

and of his careful studies in arboriculture. He did 
not, however, let his enthusiasm for botany and 
horticulture overcome his determination that the 
State of Massachusetts should be well governed, 
and that in the United States, still under Virgin- 
ian rule, Massachusetts should maintain the rights 
which one would have said she had fairly won in 
the Revolution. 

With John Lowell, in his determination that there 
should be a journal suited for the real discussion 
of public topics, were associated such men as Galli- 
son, whose name is remembered still as a careful 
student of politics and social order; Henry D. 
Sedgwick, and Dr. Jacob Bigelovv, and one of the 
youngest of the circle was my father, Nathan Hale, 
Mr. Webster joined them when he removed to Bos- 
ton. My father never shirked work; he always 
liked it, and in the beginning of the Weekly Messen- 
ger it was natural that a young lawyer, only thirty- 
seven years old, should take the working oar in 
the publication. He still had an increasing and 
successful practice at the bar, he had established 
his reputation as a mathematician as a preceptor 
at Exeter, he had a gift for languages, and was 
thus equipped as few of the young lawyers of 
the time could have been. Naturally enough, as 
the Weekly Messenger established itself, he became 
its editor, and within a very short time he assumed 
the obligations and the prospects, whatever they 
were, of the publication of the paper. Before 
long, the proprietors of the Boston Daily Adver- 



3 1 8 Sixty Years 

User, which had been started purely as a specula- 
tion, I think, a few weeks before, found themselves 
unable to carry it forward, and Mr. Hale purchased 
what there was to purchase of that paper. He and 
his friends found themselves in the possession of 
a daily journal where they had only proposed a 
weekly one. He enjoyed this position intensely. 
He soon abandoned entirely his legal practice, and 
gave himself heart and soul to the building up of 
the Boston Daily Advertiser. 

It was such a newspaper as had never been 
heard of or dreamed of in Boston until that time. 
Contributors very soon found that while their place 
as contributors was recognized, there was a certain 
shrine of the paper which no one could enter but 
the high priest, and that he entered that shrine 
every day. In other words, he introduced the 
editorial, now perfectly well known in all journals 
in all parts of the world, but which had never ap- 
peared in any New England newspaper before. 
The Advertiser expressed its own editorial opinion, 
as all journals of any position affect now to assert 
theirs. The Cohimbian Centinel, the old-fashioned 
Federalist organ, declined gradually in the face of 
the rivalry of the Advertiser. The old Chro7iicle, 
which had united itself with the Gaaettes^nd Patriot 
and had been the organ of the Democratic parties 
in high party times, also declined in circulation. 
And before the year 1835 the Daily Advertiser 
had bought the subscription-list of both these 
papers, and existed then, as it exists now, as the 



Editorial Duty 3 1 9 

only representative of all papers which were pub- 
lished in Boston before the year 1820. 

I had the good fortune of being the son of the 
founder and editor of the Daily Advertiser, The 
outlook which I had on life was the outlook of a 
journalist. As soon as we could print at all with 
a pencil, we began making our own little news- 
papers at home, and I found myself an editor, 
therefore, in my way, before I was ten years old. 

I have once or twice said in public that I was 
cradled in the sheets of a daily journal. The 
remark is almost literally true. At the time I was 
born we lived in a house which was taken down 
by Mr. Parker in the enlargement of the Parker 
House, and I never go in at the Tremont Street 
entrance of that hotel without recollecting that I 
first drew breath on the floor some twenty-five 
feet higher than the marble on which I am step- 
ping. In an earlier chapter of this book I have 
described a little incident which is connected with 
the editorial ofiice in that house. 

Children in such a house naturally took the 
atmosphere of the house, and interested them- 
selves in the affairs of the world. It was thus 
that we had our own post-offices at the roots of 
selected trees on the Common, where we left the 
mail one day and collected it the next to carry it 
on our " truck " to the next post-office. My father 
was president of the Type Foundry. The work- 
men there knew us, and would give us new type 
and shavings of type metal. As I have said else- 



320 Sixty Years 

where, when I was twelve years old I could set 
type as well as the average journeyman ; and 
to-day I could earn my living as a job printer. 
We formed the habit of writing narrative in our 
family newspapers, of which there were two, which 
were read at the breakfast table on alternate Mon- 
day mornings. I remember that I was blamed 
once for copying a description of an English 
country house, of which I had made up every 
word. It is not the last time when I have been 
criticised for being too realistic. 

I wish I had time to hunt up the first article of 
mine which was printed in the Advertiser. I was 
very proud of it. It may have been eight lines 
long. While we were engaged one evening on 
our evening amusements, my father brought in 
the yournal des Debats, and pointing out to me 
an article on some French discoveries near Baby- 
lon, he said that if I would translate it, he would 
print the translation in the paper. I assented 
gratefully, as any decent boy would, under the 
circumstances. But as soon as he had left the 
room, I said to my mother that he had forgotten 
that I had never learned any French, In fact, 
I only knew a few French phrases, through I 
could puzzle out a passage of Viri Romae. She 
said this was true, but that it would be a pity to 
disappoint papa, and she gave me the French dic- 
tionary and, what was more to the purpose, my 
sister Lucretia's assistance. She probably knew 
as much of French as I did of Latin. Between 



Editorial Duty 321 

us we puzzled out the paragraph, and it was my 
trial stroke in journalism. 

We boys found a copy of Gurney's shorthand 
in the house, and were beginning some experiments 
with it when Mr. Thomas Towndrow, lately on the 
Tribune's staff, came to Boston to teach people 
how to write shorthand. He sent his text-books 
to the office, for notice I suppose, and we boys 
got hold of them, I was about nine years old. 
We used to practise at church, and were encour- 
aged to do so, I suppose because it kept us awake. 
Unfortunately it was long before Pitman introduced 
the phonography of to-day, and compared with 
that our stenography was a wretched engine. But 
it was the best we had. And my practice in it has 
been of daily service to me from that time to this. 
The winter when I was sixteen I was sent to the 
State House, with instructions to make a daily 
sketch of what was most interesting in the debates. 
The custom of the Boston papers for many years 
was to copy and print the whole journal of House 
and Senate. These sketches of debates were ad- 
ditional. In this way I served in the session of 
1839, and again in 1843. I speak of this because 
I think such training is invaluable for any youug 
man. It introduced me to men who were to be 
leaders in the next fifty years, and it was a good 
initiation into the study of political history and 
practical sociology. 

It is the fashion of the journals of to-day, accus- 
tomed to the use of weapons of precision, to 



322 Sixty Years 

ridicule the newspaper work of the middle of 
the century. I do not wonder at this, nor do I 
object to it. But the training of an office boy- 
then meant the training of an all-round man as 
it hardly does now. I remember, myself, the 
arrival of the Great Western steamer with ad- 
vices from Europe thirty-five days later than 
we had before. The history of three quarters 
of the world for more than a month had to 
be digested and written before you went to press. 
Again, you did not know just at what moment 
your news might come or in what language. At 
the last hour one of the ship-news men might 
come up with a " Hamburg Correspondenten," or 
a " diario," or some French gazette which he had 
extorted from a skipper who had made a good 
run — and you knew that no other paper in Amer- 
ica had the news. 

All such surprises are lost in these days of the 
telegraph. Indeed I see newspapers where no 
official seems to read the foreign journals at all. 
The modern theory is all well enough for facts, 
but their narrative is sadly deficient in atmosphere 
and local color. 

In writing to a friend about the year i8i2, my 
father said to him, " There is nothing in the issue 
of the Messenger from the direction of the covers 
to the writing of the editorials which I have not 
done with my own hands, excepting the setting 
of the type and the working of the press." I could 
have said the same thing in 1845, without the 



Editorial Duty 323 

exception which my father made, save that the 
press in my time was, of course, worked by steam. 
I have set type, I have carried proof to authors, 
and I have written the obituary of a president. 
It was, however, after this time that I happened 
to be on duty to close up the paper the night 
when President Taylor died. The foreman came 
down and asked me very respectfully if I would 
not send up the president's obituary before they 
put the " country edition " to press. This edition 
w^ould have to go to press at two o'clock in the 
morning. I said, " No, I will write no man's 
obituary before he is dead. But you may send 
for me as soon as you get the despatch." Accord- 
ingly I went home. I was undressing myself when 
I heard the tap of the messenger's feet on the 
sidewalk. I put my head out of the window, to 
hear him say, " He is dead, sir," and I said, " I will 
be at the office as soon as you are." And then 
and there I wrote the obituary. Modern journal- 
ism would have had the obituary in type before the 
president was inaugurated. 

"Here, then, is a place in which I may answer 
the questions which will be brought me by my 
young friends as to the value of a newspaper 
office as a school for literary work. Many a 
young man, tempted by the regular though small 
wages paid weekly by a newspaper, persuades 
himself that though he does not mean to be a 
journalist he shall find in a newspaper office a 
good training for literary life. He obtains with 



324 Sixty Years 

difficulty a situation on the staff of a large news- 
paper, and after three months is disappointed to 
find that his English style is no better than it 
was, that his reputation as an author has not ad- 
vanced, and he even suspects that his aspirations 
and hopes with regard to sound literature are no 
higher than they were. Either before such a trial 
or after it, such young men are very apt to come 
to persons who have had any experience in literary 
life, to ask them what advantage the machinery of 
the newspaper press gives to a person attempt- 
ing literature as a profession. 

As I have intimated, the conditions of journalism 
now are wholly different from those which sur- 
rounded it in the days when I was in close connec- 
tion with the Boston Daily Advertiser. But there 
are some things in newspaper work which are the 
same as they were then. The first real advantage 
which a man gains in a newspaper office is that, 
whether he wishes to or not, he must be educated 
to write narrative. No reporter or other newspaper 
writer really earns his salt unless he is able to 
describe something which he has seen or about 
which he knows facts. The public does not under- 
stand to-day why one paper is successful and why 
another gradually runs behindhand. I believe 
myself that the success of a great journal may 
always be measured by its skill in narrative of 
facts. It is very curious, but it is true, that even 
well educated people are, generally speaking, quite 
unable to describe anything. The journals of 



Editorial Duty 325 

missionary associations are a melancholy illustra- 
tion of this. The gentlemen and ladies whom 
they send abroad are engaged in the most curious 
and fascinating work, they are surrounded by new 
circumstances, their business is one which calls 
forth every power of their own ; nothing connected 
with it can be petty. And they are simply asked 
to tell what they have seen and what they know 
to people on whose contributions the whole enter- 
prise depends. When their letters home are pub- 
lished, they have generally so little color that 
unless you look at the title you would never know 
whether they were describing work in an intelligent 
Japanese community, in a horde of Hottentots in 
Africa, or among a group of Eskimo by the 
Arctic ocean. 

I know that such gentlemen and ladies plead as 
an excuse the interference of the supervising ofificers 
of the missionary establishments. I know only 
too well that such boards of editors have a dislike 
to anything which seems interesting, individual, or 
vivid ; they like to tame down all articles to a cer- 
tain neutral tint. All the same, it must be true 
that the art of narrative is not generally cultivated 
in institutions of education. The place where 
there is a chance to see what one can do in it is 
the office of a newspaper. 

I am quite clear that the greatest advantage I 
have gained from work on a daily newspaper is 
the habit which is necessarily formed, of writing 
down, on the first draft, what you have to say, and 



326 Sixty Years 

not relying on another day or another mood for 
its correction. Mr. Bryant, the poet-editor of the 
New York Post, once said to me that no article for 
a daily journal should ever be kept after the day 
when it was written ; if it were not used the day it 
was written, it should be returned to the writer or 
put into the fire. Not only is this true, but well 
trained newspaper writers, as I think, must not 
expect even to see work in proof This involves 
punctuation, it involves handwriting, it involves all 
subtleties of style, and it involves the definite 
clearness of the statement or opinion expressed. 

Here I was in an excellent school. My father 
wrote admirable English; I think at heart he 
despised rhetoric, for all that. He would not 
even lift his reader along by an apt illustration or 
quotation; but what he said was intelligible, and 
left no room for question about its meaning. I 
have seen him sit for five minutes, even when there 
was a pressure of haste, that he might determine 
what word he would use in the line which he was 
writing. But when he used that word he had 
used it, and there was no necessity for changing 
it. 

Bred in that school, I acquired the habit — I 
will not say the power — of saying on the first 
endeavor what I wanted to say. I have been 
spared, by what you may call this technical habit, 
from the annoyance or mortification which waits 
on men who, on looking at their manuscripts after 
a week, put them in the fire. "What I have 



Editorial Duty 327 

written I have written," said Pilate; and although 
he was certainly a very weak man in other affairs, 
he seems to have had a certain firmness of convic- 
tion here. 

As an editor since that time, I have often, I 
might say always, found that young writers said in 
the private notes accompanying their papers, " This 
is not done as well as I can do it," or " I have 
dashed this off." They are not satisfied with their 
own work when they submit it to you. I think 
that the press, when it is directed by a vigorous 
leader, trains men to do as well as they can on the 
first endeavor. 

In saying this, I have intimated that there is a 
certain accuracy gained in writing for the press 
which is important, whether it be accuracy of 
thought, accuracy of expression, accuracy of punct- 
uation, or even accuracy in the physical business 
of writing. I was once engaged in a great tour de 
force in which, in our office, we reported Rufus 
Choate's eulogy on Harrison, knowing that he did 
not want to give it to the press. Our report, as it 
proved, was the only report which the world has 
ever had of that somewhat remarkable oration. I 
read the proof of all my work up to the last dozen 
lines. It was three or four o'clock in the morning, 
and trusting to a well-disciplined office, after I 
sent my last page of copy upstairs I walked home. 
At my late breakfast I seized the newspaper, to 
find that the last words of the address were printed 
thus : " A lesson which is taught from the mouths 



328 Sixty Years 

which are past to the mouths which are to come," 
Mr. Choate's last words having been, " A lesson 
taught by the motiths which are past to the viojitJis 
which are to come." Any youngster who has as 
severe a blow as this, learns that if his proofs are 
to be accurate his manuscript must be good. 

I have lingering with me a good many of the 
old superstitions about all-round men. It does 
not disgust me to know that the conqueror of the 
Spanish Armada had never been to sea when he 
was appointed on a business which certainly some- 
body managed very well. I am not very much 
distressed when I find that James Lowell is ap- 
pointed minister to England, though he has never 
been a secretary of legation or an attache at a for- 
eign court. This means that in general I suppose 
moral force is what tells, and that method or dis- 
cipline or technique must be made to follow rather 
than to lead. With this feeling, I think no man is 
hurt by a general acquaintance with the world in 
which he lives, such as a newspaper ought to give, 
and which it gave in the old times. But I have 
not found of late that the charge of a single 
department in a newspaper helped a man much in 
his general view of the social order around him. 
I do not think that if I wanted information on a 
great sociological problem I should expect to find 
it any more by consulting the first ten reporters 
whom I met than by consulting the first ten phy- 
sicians or engineers or clergymen. On the other 
hand, there is a something in modern journalism 



Editorial Duty 329 

which is pathetic in its confinement of men to 
routine. The masters of the profession are well 
aware of this. Their duties are so pressing that 
they do not see other men as much as most of us 
do, and in the moment when public opinion is 
being formed, in clubs, at dinner parties, in meet- 
ings of trades-unions or conventions, these gentle- 
men, who think they have public opinion to lead, 
are shut up in their own offices. They have to 
get their public opinion, one might say, at second- 
hand. 

It is a little thing to say, but I have always been 
glad, as a writer for the press, that I have been a 
compositor. I do not say that because a man is 
a good compositor he will be a good writer. I do 
say that the mere study of the arrangement of 
words, which comes to a man who has to put them 
somewhat slowly into type, is a good experience. 
I have fancied that I could trace in Franklin's 
admirable English some of the lessons which he 
learned at the composing-room desk. Printers 
have always been glad to oblige me as my books 
have been going through the press. I have never 
met with a disagreeable or crusty foreman or com- 
positor. I am apt to think that the comfort and 
ease of such a relation between the writer and the 
printer has been due in part to the fact that I knew 
what I was talking about when I was wishing for 
accommodation or was putting my questions. And 
I am always glad, therefore, when I find in the 
machinery of a boarding-school, an industrial 



330 Sixty Years 

school, an academy, or a college, that provision is 
made for the publication even of a small journal, 
in which the infant writers may get some sight at 
least of the mechanical methods on which we all 
depend. 

To the generation of to-day, the achievements 
of the modern press seem so remarkable that men 
speak with a certain contempt of the publishing of 
the generation before us. But we here only stand 
just where our predecessors have stood. My 
father died in the year 1863. He had been con- 
nected with journalism for more than fifty years. 
I remember that when he died I made a careful 
calculation which showed that in his own printing 
offices, — that is, in his newspaper offices and in a 
book-printing office which he directed for some 
years, he had printed more words and circulated 
them to the world, than existed in all the libraries 
of the world on the day when his printing enter- 
prises began. 

It will be more convenient, both to writer and 
reader, to bring into one short chapter the dates 
of different editorial enterprises, in the sixty 
years which followed my graduation, — and I 
do this here, even though I repeat some details 
which are scattered in other places in this volume. 
In " Lowell and His Friends," I have given some 
account of Harvardana, which was published 
at Cambridge for four years. It died with the 
volume of which Lowell was one of the editors. 
I was an active member of Alpha Delta Phi, — 



Editorial Duty 331 

with which it was born. But I do not remember 
that there was even a suggestion that wc should 
attempt a fifth volume. In truth the college con- 
stituency was not then large enough to sustain 
any journal. I do not believe that there were 
ever printed more than three hundred copies 
of any one issue of Harvardana. 

When I left college Dr. Palfrey asked me, very 
kindly, to furnish some articles for the North Ameri- 
can, which he then edited, and these must be my 
first printed magazine articles. I was well pleased 
that the Christian Examiner printed an anony- 
mous article which I sent them, the more pleased 
perhaps, because nearly at the same time they 
rejected an article which bore my name. In 
January, 1841, my father began the publication 
of the Monthly CJironicle of Events, Discoveries, 
Improvements and Opinions — and for the benefit 
of mankind, he continued it for three years. If 
mankind had had the good sense to continue it 
from that day to this, the fifty-eight volumes 
would be now of immense benefit to all of us 
who ever want to know anything on a sudden; — 
the three extant volumes being to this day a 
most available book of reference for the three 
years they cover. I acted, in a way, as office 
editor of this magazine, — reading proofs, writ- 
ing much of the chronology, — and permitted 
occasionally to write longer articles. In the 
end of 1 841 my brother Nathan was made editor 
of the Boston Miscellany, and I was a sort of Man 



332 Sixty Years 

Friday on his staff also. " Short Stories," proof- 
sheets, an occasional poem written up to the one 
engraving for the month — whatever there was to 
do, I did it as well as I could. Such was the 
system of education in which we had been trained. 

I have spoken of my work as a reporter. After 
I became a minister in Worcester the Stmday 
School Gazette was established at my suggestion 
and that of Edmund B, Willson, my life-long 
friend, and for three or four years I was more 
or less responsible for that. I received at that 
time a proposal which gratified me — to goto New 
York to edit a weekly newspaper. But I was too 
well satisfied with my own profession to accept 
the proposal, — not to say that I knew the daily 
slavery of editorial life too well. 

When I returned to Boston, in 1856, the plans 
were already formed which led to the appointment 
of Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge as editor-in-chief of 
the Christian Examiner. He appointed m.e and 
my friend Joseph Henry Allen his assistants. We 
used to call him " The Chief," a title which he well 
deserved for many reasons. For two or three years 
I had a certain responsibility in the editing of the 
Examiner, which, as I suppose, directed attention 
to me when, in what I may call, I believe, the 
revival of the Unitarian Church, I was appointed 
to take charge of Old and Nezv, which was estab- 
lished under the auspices of the Unitarian Associ- 
ation. 

Old and Nezv was a monthly magazine which 



Editorial Duty 333 

we started under what I still think a well conceived 
idea, that if we took the acceptable form of a lite- 
rary and political journal, we could carry to thou- 
sands of people intelligent discussions on the 
subject of religion which they would otherwise never 
have read. I venture to say, in writing these 
words, that we attempted to do what the Out- 
look of New York does so well to-day. We took 
the ground that literature and politics and theology 
and religion might be discussed within the same 
covers and read by the same readers. If you 
please to take the language of the trade, we believed 
that the stories and the poems in our journal could 
"float" the theology and the religion. 

I entered cordially into this plan, and in eleven 
volumes I edited the journal, which we called Old 
and New. It is interesting to me now to remem- 
ber that its first name was TJie Two Worlds, — 
borrowed from the famous review of the French. 
A witty friend of mine had said before this that to 
read the Rezmc de Deux Mondcs was in itself a 
liberal education. But after the name had been 
determined, and the titlepage had been printed, I 
said to myself, "What is our object but to show 
that the two worlds are one world, that the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand, that the same God rules here 
as rules through the universe? Why should we 
encumber ourselves with the constant necessity of 
saying to people that geology, which belongs to 
the world of nature, and loyalty to the word of the 
present God as it shows itself in man's daily life. 



334 Sixty Years 

— that these two do not belong to two worlds but 
belong to one world? Why should we call our 
journal The Two Worlds when we mean that it 
is a journal which records the work of one God, 
the same in all worlds?" Without consultation 
with any of the persons who had agreed on the 
old name, I took the name Old and Nezv, and I 
have never regretted it. 

At the end of eleven volumes, we had more than 
one competitor in the same path ; especially 
Scrihiicr s Magazine, under the loyal oversight of 
Mr. Holland, Mr. Roswell-Smith, and Mr. Gilder. 
The Unitarian Association had long since tired of 
us ; for it was impossible to make the directors of 
a denominational society understand that we were 
doing their work — as we were — better than they 
could do it for themselves. For myself, I was 
tired of the strain of editorial life, and Old and 
New was merged in Scribners Magazine. This 
is the reason why " Philip Nolan's Friends" was 
printed in that magazine. 

With that enterprise, ended for me, for eight 
years, any responsible charge of any magazine or 
newspaper. But I had earned a certain comrade- 
ship in newspaper and magazine offices which gave 
me ready access to their pages whenever I had 
anything to say. At one time I was under regular 
contract with Harper's Magazine to furnish short 
stories for them. In 1883, as has been said in a 
former volume of this series, we began to publish 
the circulars of the Lend a Hand Clubs; and this 



Editorial Duty 335 

monthly publication eventually grew into the mag- 
azine called Lend a Hand. Of this the first vol- 
ume was published in 1886, and the last in 1897, 
when the magazine was merged in the Charities 
Revieiv of New York. It was necessary, however, 
to have a means of communication with the various 
"silver cross clubs," so called, in different parts of 
the world, and at the central office of those clubs 
we began to publish the Lend a Hand Record, 
which has continued to this day, I have a general 
oversight of this journal. 

I believe that I put down these details because 
I have so often advised my young friends in my 
own profession to be in the habit of writing a good 
deal for the press. There is no doubt that a man 
who has to address audiences, as ministers do, 
ought to be perfectly at ease in extempore speech. 
But the very fact that he is at ease in it involves 
danger to him unless he is always training himself 
in accurate habits of writing. I know no way in 
which those habits can be kept up so well as by 
writing for print. There is no such stringent criti- 
cism as the criticism which a man passes upon 
himself when he detects too late in print the 
carelessness which he did not notice in his manu- 
script. 



LITERARY AND EDITORIAL WORK 

I HAVE spoken in another place of the collection of 
Letters on Irish Emigration which was published in 
the winter of 1852, Four years earlier I had edited 
for Phillips and Sampson a Christmas book which 
we called " The Rosary ; " and I think this is the 
first book which ever appeared with my name. I 
had before written a child's book in a series edited 
by my mother. 

In the summer of 1850, I published in a Sunday 
School series, " Scenes from Christian History," 
twenty-nine sketches from the history of 1800 
years. The next year my sister Lucretia and I 
wrote " Margaret Percival in America." Miss 
Sewell's novels were very popular at that time, 
and we took one of her heroines and brought her 
over to this country, to open her eyes a little as to 
the narrowness of her ecclesiastical associations. 
It was a little droll that the popularity of the name 
sold the book in several editions, all of which, so 
far as I ever could understand, went into the 
libraries of Episcopal churches, — the directors of 
those libraries not having read far enough to under- 
stand that the book was not drawn precisely in 



Literary and Editorial Work 337 

the interests of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in America. 

As my contribution to the Kansas movement, 
I prepared and pubHshed in 1854 a History of 
Kansas and Nebraska. As the preface of the 
book says, this is perhaps the first history which 
was ever written of a State which at that moment 
had not legally one white inhabitant. I could 
hardly have written this book, of which I am even 
now not ashamed, without the matchless resources 
of the American Antiquarian Society, where I 
found all the documents I needed as to the early 
explorations undertaken by the United States, and 
indeed by the French explorers. From more 
recent publications we now know some things 
which we did not know then ; but so far as the 
authorities then known were of use, that book 
resumes the history of exploration in Kansas up 
till that time. 

In 1859 I went to Europe for the first time, and 
afterwards printed some passages from my journals 
and letters, under the title, " Ninety Days' Worth 
of Europe." 

In 1868 I printed a collection of short stories 
of which the earliest in date was from the " Boston 
Miscellany." We called this " If, Yes, and Per- 
haps." I justified this title in the preface by 
saying that some of the stories were probabilities, 
some of the narratives were pure fact, and some of 
the sketches were possibilities; yet we could not 
call the book by as cumbrous a name as " Proba- 



338 Sixty Years 

bilities, Realities, and Possibilities." It proved 
necessary, however, to change the name, and this 
book has been published since with the title, " The 
Man without a Country, and other Tales." 

To write the story of " The Man without a 
Country" and its sequel, " Philip Nolan's Friends," 
I had to make as careful study as I could of the 
history of the acquisition of Louisiana by the 
United States. California had always interested 
me, and I had made some contribution to its early 
history. These papers of mine attracted William 
Cullen Bryant's attention, and when he planned 
the " Popular History of the United States," he 
asked me to contribute the Spanish and French 
chapters. This I did, excepting the chapter in 
the first volume relating to the first settlement of 
Florida. 

In the year 1850 I was chosen a member of 
the American Antiquarian Society, and I served 
as its secretary until I left Worcester in 1856. 

For the encouragement of young authors, I will 
say that I have always enjoyed the lottery of 
the prize competitions, which were perhaps more 
frequent forty years ago than they are now. At 
a time when I was not troubled by having too 
much money, I received a prize offered by Sar- 
tains Magazine for an essay called " Paul before 
Nero." I received a prize from the Philadel- 
phia Orphan Refuge for a paper on the educa- 
tion of orphan children, which I shall try to pub- 
lish in another volume of this series. No one has 



Literary and Editorial Work 339 

ever taken the advice which it offered, but it 
was good advice for all that. 

Frank Leslie offered a prize for a short story, 
and I received one of the second prizes for " The 
Children of the Public." Our dear friend Miss 
Louisa Alcott received the first prize, and deserved 
it. She used to say, whenever I met her, that she 
had always been afraid to republish the story, 
but I told her that I sat at her feet as a story-teller. 

I received a prize at the outset of the Civil War 
for an essay on emigration from the North to the 
South. Since those days I have sat as judge in 
similar competitions more often than I have ap- 
peared as a competitor. I think competitions 
generally disappoint the gentlemen who offer the 
prizes. I believe I ought to say, however, that, 
speaking from experience, I know that the editors 
of magazines are eager to put " fresh hands at the 
bellows " whenever they can. 



HARVARD REVISITED 

[At the request of the Editors of the Atlantic Monthly I wrote 
for them in 1895 the following paper, on the changes in Cambridge 
in two generations. It was printed in the Atlantic in 1896.] 

It is three years since I promised The Atlantic 
Monthly that, by way of closing a series of remi- 
niscences, I would attempt a comparison of Har- 
vard College sixty years ago with the college of 
to-day. 

The subject is an interesting one, and is very 
apt to come up at class dinners, as old gentlemen, 
in a figure, pick over their walnuts. If Mr. Hill 
will pardon a parenthesis, let me say that a hun- 
dred years ago and more George Washington 
would frequently " sit over his walnuts " two 
hours, really picking out the meats and nibbling 
at them, with the accompaniment of one only 
glass of Madeira. The subject is an interesting 
one, but it has proved so interesting that I have 
never put pen to paper until now. For le mieux 
est Venncnii dii bon, alas, and one does not very 
willingly handle a theme which so many other 
men can work out much better than he. 

I am set on it, at last, by the accident that I 



Harvard Revisited 341 

have been reading this week Mark Pattison's ex- 
traordinary and therefore amusing memorials of 
his own Hfe in Oxford, to which place he went 
four years before I went to our Cambridge. The 
book, quite worthless in itself, is amusing, and in- 
deed edifying, when matched in with Stanley's, 
Ward's, Newman's, and a dozen other memorials 
of Oxford life at the same time. To an American 
graduate it is simply amazing, as well as amusing, 
because it exhibits a habit of life — one hardly 
says of thought — among undergraduates as dif- 
ferent from our undergraduate life as the life of 
Mr. Kipling's four-footed friends is different from 
the life of Thyrsis and Amyntas in Arcadia. Let 
me try my hand and memory in giving to the 
undergraduate of to-day some notion of what 
undergraduates at our Cambridge did, and what 
they thought about, fifty or sixty years ago. Pos- 
sibly this may show how it happened that a few of 
them turned out to be of some use in the world. 

As matter of familiar speech or language, let me 
begin with saying that, in the thirties, it was not 
the habit of Harvard College men or boys to say 
that they were of Harvard or from Harvard. We 
knew what such words meant, and Amherst or 
Williams men used them to us, not we to them. 
We spoke of ourselves as Cambridge men, — as a 
Balliol man now might say he was from Oxford. 
This means, I think, that we all wanted to hold to 
the phrase in the Constitution of Massachusetts 
which speaks of the " University at Cambridge." 



342 Sixty Years 

Mr. Everett afterward introduced this on the col- 
lege programmes and catalogues. It showed that 
a man was somewhat fresh if he said he was from 
Harvard. The present fashion came in a little 
after. 

Professor Beers has just now written a pleasant 
book which he calls " Initial Studies in American 
Letters." He says good-naturedly that " the pro- 
fessors of literature in our colleges are usually 
persons who have made no additions to literature; 
and the professors of rhetoric seem ordinarily to 
have been selected to teach students how to write, 
for the reason that they themselves have never 
written anything that any one has read." And 
after this friendly joke on his own craft, he adds 
that " the Harvard College of some fifty years ago 
offers some striking exceptions to these remarks." 
I will own that, as a Cambridge man, I read with 
some pride and much pleasure his list of the seven- 
teen years after 1821, in which there graduated 
Emerson, Holmes, Sumner, Phillips, Motley, 
Thoreau, and Lowell. He had only to go a 
little farther to have added Higginson and Park- 
man. Let me say, in passing, that the inaugural 
address delivered by Edward Channing in 18 19, 
when he assumed the Boylston Chair of Rhetoric 
at Cambridge, is still worth reading; and let me 
also say that we Cambridge men are a little sur- 
prised that in Dr. Beers's list we do not find the 
name of Frederic Henry Hedge. The years of 
which I am now to speak, of my own under- 



Harvard Revisited 343 

graduate life, arc years included in the period of 
which Dr. Beers speaks with such approval. 

The Oxford of Stanley, Ward, and Pattison, and 
the Harvard of the same time, touch at only one 
point. In each, the freshman, on entering, if he 
thought at all, was amazed at the indifference 
with which some of his teachers handled the busi- 
ness of education. Here was poor Pattison, an* 
unlicked cub from Yorkshire, who when he was 
eighteen years old turned up at Oxford. Poor 
boy, he says he went there with an idea that 
Oxford was a place for teaching and learning. 
He went to his first lecture, what we should call 
his first recitation, without any of the niceties 
of scholarship, not well grounded in the Greek 
grammar, and he had not been shown how to 
read Greek. To his amazement, he found that 
Dennison, his teacher, did not, in the whole 
course, make a single remark on Alkestis or 
Hippolytus which did not come from the notes 
at the foot of the page. " In less than a week," 
he says, " I was entirely disillusionized as to what 
I was to learn in an Oxford lecture-room." 

Stanley, four years after, made just the same re- 
mark. Stanley had been well trained at Rugby. 
He went up to Oxford supposing that he was to 
be taught something. Here is his account, writ- 
ten after a month at Balliol : " Alas, most truly 
was it said that the last year at school surpassed 
a hundredfold the first year of college. . . . We 
construed in the old way, word for word in turn. 



344 Sixty Years 

with one or two unimportant remarks from the 
tutor." Two out of three classical lectures he 
finds absolutely useless. 

I copy these words from the Oxford men of that 
time, because such was exactly our experience in 
the classics at Cambridge. 

I tried, in an earlier paper, to give some sense 
of the freshness and vitality of Longfellow's inti- 
macy with his classes, and of Edward Channing's 
with his. I should be glad to speak at more 
length of Pietro Bachi, about whose life there 
was an element of mystery. All I knew of him 
was that he was an accomplished Italian gentle- 
man, who made friends of us, and who interested 
us vitally in the literature of Italy. Mr. Sparks 
read a few lectures while I was in college, and was 
perfectly willing to make us companions and to 
talk with us about American history as a master 
has a right to talk. With Dr. Webster, also, and 
with Mr. Harris, the instructor in natural history, 
we were on intimate terms, and once in a while we 
got some bit of information from one of them or 
the other. For the rest, four years of college 
were, so far as the staff went, four years of mere 
mechanical drudgery. The bell rang, and you 
went in to the exercise. You sat through an 
hour, and heard other men blunder through it. 
Nobody told anybody anything, and nobody gave 
anybody any light. 

My father published the Boston Daily Advertiser, 
and so I was one of the few boys in college who 



Harvard Revisited 345 

had a daily newspaper. After breakfast I used to 
walk round and get the paper, and was therefore 
ready to take it in to the eight o'clock recitation. 
I used to fold it lengthwise, so that I could turn it 
over without annoying my neighbors, and read it 
as the recitation in what they called philosophy 
went on. When I had done this a week or so, the 
teacher asked me to stop after the recitation, and 
remonstrated with me. I said : " You see I make 
no concealment of it. It seems a pity to waste the 
hour, and I bring in the paper to read it at that 
time." I then asked what good there was in my 
listening to a lot of men stumbling over something 
which only half of them knew anything about. 
He assented very frankly to my view of that part 
of the business. He did not pretend that he 
assisted by a word the process of learning. He 
only said he thought the newspaper was bad for 
the discipline of the place; and I said, if it was 
his wish that I should not read it, I would not. I 
closed the conversation by asking him a question 
on the subject we had in hand, which he could not 
answer. This anecdote, I think, is worth telling 
as an illustration of the view which both parties 
took of the transaction which was called a recita- 
tion. 

So was it that, for most of us who had any en- 
thusiasm or ambition, the work of the college, so 
called, was, generally speaking, a sad bore. In 
my junior year I was so annoyed by a bit of petty 
tyranny on the part of one of the teachers that I 



34-6 Sixty Years 

went to Boston and told my father that I must 
give it all up. I said that I would not bear it any- 
longer; that I wanted to go to work, and I would 
go to work wherever he would place me. He was 
a very wise man, and, among other things, he knew 
how to deal with boys. He told me that he knew 
very well that this particular person was my in- 
ferior. It was one of the misfortunes, he said, of 
such institutions that they had to enlist a great 
many inferior men in their management, but that 
I would find, as I went through life, that I had a 
great deal to do with men inferior to myself, and 
that he wanted me to take this experience as a 
part of the training of the university. His confi- 
dence in me would never be abated, he was pleased 
to say, and I might go back to Cambridge with 
that feeling. So I went back. I have never 
changed my opinion about the person who was 
involved, from that day to this day, but I have 
been grateful to my father for handling a pettish 
boy with such wisdom. 

On the other hand, if we did not profit much 
from the functions of the staff", we had a good 
deal of time left to us in which to work out 
our own salvation. And as I look on the Cam- 
bridge of to-day, I am disposed to ask whether 
now young fellows who want to work are not 
kept up to the rack a little too closely. I some- 
times think, if I may follow out the parallel with 
horses, that we got as much from that part of the 
time when we were kicking our heels in the pas- 



Harvard Revisited 347 

ture as we got from the time when we were tied 
up in the stalls. Anyway, this is what happened : 
We had, on the average, three recitations a day, 
sometimes four. For each recitation it took an 
hour to prepare ; at least, that was the rule I laid 
down. The thing was a thing to be done. I gave 
to it an hour; never more, and seldom less. If it 
could be done in that time, well ; if it could not, 
why, so much the worse for the thing. I was not 
going to fool away any more time over that. Here 
were six hours, then, provided for, out of the 
fifteen. For the rest what? There was not nearly 
so much of athletics as there is now. There was 
no gymnasium, but there was, in summer, a circle 
of six miles radius where anybody who had legs 
could go in search of wild flowers or of butterflies, 
or to practise at a mark with pistols, or, if it were 
at the right season, even to look for partridge or 
quail or plover. A man could walk over to Revere 
Beach and collect shells, if the three recitations 
and the two chapel exercises did not come in at 
too close periods. Boats on the river were pro- 
hibited, under the statute, which we had all agreed 
to obey, forbidding us to keep " horses, dogs, or 
other animals." 

Then there was the library, — a very poor 
library, as libraries now go, but it had fifty thous- 
and books in it, and a good many of them were 
books worth reading. We were permitted to go 
in and out and find pasture. We took down just 
what we chose ; nobody helped us, and nobody 



348 Sixty Years 

hindered us. There were not many recent books 
there, but there were a few. 

I forgot what it was, but something set me on 
the explorations of the Pacific coast. I read from 
the invaluable Ebeling collection ever so many 
things that are of use to me every day of my life 
now. Very likely this matchless collection gave 
a direction to my reading ever since, so I am very 
grateful for it, and to Mr, Eliot who gave it to the 
college. I used to hunt over the bound volumes 
of The Gentleman s Magazine. Heaven knows 
what I found there, but I found something. In 
short, I taught myself how to work up a subject 
in this precious freedom of the library. 

They gave out as a subject for a Bowdoin dis- 
sertation The Difference between the Imaginary 
Beings of the Poets and Those of Folk-Lore. I 
wanted the money for a Bowdoin prize badly, and 
I wrote on this subject, of which I knew nothing. 
But I went to the library, I dipped through Pope's 
Homer, Dryden's Virgil, and all the recent trans- 
lations of the prominent Greek and Latin classics, 
— I had no time to take them in the original, 
though I was ashamed that I did not, — and I 
wrote my essay accordingly. It was a good, de- 
serving piece of hack-work, I guess. I have never 
read it from that day to this, but I know it got a 
second prize. Morison, my classmate, got another 
second prize, and we were both told that neither 
of the essays was good enough for a first prize. 
I learned the other day that Mr. Emerson once 



Harvard Revisited 349 

came out in exactly the same way with both of 
his Bowdoin essays, and any mortification of mine 
certainly would have been soothed by that dis- 
covery. But I have no recollection of any sense 
of mortification, and I tell the story now simply to 
show how good a thing a good library is. If Mr. 
Hill will pardon another parenthesis, I will say 
that there was nothing which Emerson liked to 
discourse about more than this very matter of the 
good of an open library, where a person may rove 
about at his will. And Dr. Wayland said to me 
the very same thing. He opened the whole 
library of Brown University to every pupil he had 
there. He told me that they never lost a book 
but one miniature edition of Shakespeare, and he 
said, " And that is doing good to somebody some- 
where, now." 

In the next place, we had the college societies. 
Observe there was no professor of botany ; there 
was nobody who taught anything of natural history, 
excepting that Mr. Harris delivered a few lectures 
on botany, and Dr. Webster a few on mineralogy. 
But a lot of the fellows got together who were 
interested in such things, and we spent a great 
deal of time on our collections and on our studies 
in connection with them. A man took the habit 
of research from such work in such fashion that 
he never lost it. Alpha Delta Phi was founded 
in my day, and did for us exactly the same thing 
in matters of literature, in history, and in classical 
study. James Russell Lowell, I rather think, 



350 Sixty Years 

wrote his Beaumont and Fletcher lectures for 
Alpha Delta, of which he was a member. I know 
that I did some of the most solid work of my 
college life in Alpha Delta. And there again the 
stimulus of co-operation, of friendship, of mutual 
sympathy, did for us what it was not worth the 
while of the staff to try to do. The debating 
societies were much more of an element in college 
than they are now, and most of us then and there 
had a chance to learn how to stand erect and 
speak without a trembling of the knees. I dare 
say the debates were wretched, but we did learn 
not to be afraid of an audience. 

Our connection with the outside world was very 
close. Certainly we knew more of its affairs than 
the average undergraduate does now. This seems 
rather strange to say, in the presence of the news- 
paper life of to-day, but I have within ten years 
met a well-trained graduate, who had taken high 
rank in modern Cambridge, but did not know that 
there was any question of copyright between Eng- 
land and America. He had never heard of it. 
When I was a chaplain at Cambridge, between 
the years 1886 and 1888, I was constantly seeing 
young gentlemen who came to me for advice 
about their career after they should leave college, 
who had not the slightest idea of the duties of a 
civil engineer, of a mining engineer, of a clergy- 
man, or of the superintendent of a factory or a 
railroad. These same men could have told me 
all about nines and elevens, and such things which 



Harvard Revisited 351 

I did not know. What I mean to say is that the 
university is now so large a world that the fellows 
are much more satisfied with its home concerns 
than they were then. On the other hand, we 
were crazily interested in politics. We were just 
on the beginning of the anti-slavery conflict, and 
we knew we were. We had our opinions, such 
as they were, on every important subject which 
the men of the time were discussing". Nobody 
pretended to talk about indifference ; the word 
had not yet been applied to college life. 

And to bring to an end such hasty general- 
izations, we were interested in literature, as the 
average undergraduate of to-day is not. Let me 
repeat what I said three years ago. Emerson had 
come from England. He had the first published 
volume of Tennyson, and we copied Tennyson's 
poems and passed them from hand to hand. 
Somebody in Philadelphia had printed Coleridge, 
Shelley, and Keats in one volume, and we had 
that volume on our tables as a text-book. I had 
read every one of the principal poems of the 
prominent English poets from Chaucer down to 
Cowper, before I was a junior. I do not believe 
that there was a man in the Harvard Union who 
had not read Paradise Lost, and who was not 
reasonably well up in his Chaucer or his Spenser. 
In brief, literary ambition was the ambition before 
every man in the class. Although there were a 
great many stupid men and a great many lazy 
men, every one of them felt that it would be a 



352 Sixty Years 

disgrace if he were not in touch with literature. 
I need not say that the presence of Henry 
Longfellow was a great satisfaction to us in such 
a habit. I think it more likely, however, that 
Lowell, who was an undergraduate, showed Ten- 
nyson's poems to Longfellow than that Long- 
fellow showed them to Lowell. 

Considering the hard things I have said about 
the indifference of the staff in the recitation-room, 
I am bound to say that I am afraid we rejected in 
a very cubbish way their advances in private. I 
ought to say, what I observe poor old Pattison 
says, that I feel mortification now for the hard- 
ness or coldness with which we almost always 
received the overtures of officers who were en- 
tirely our superiors, who wanted to come into 
closer touch with us. I was afterwards on the 
most intimate terms with George Frederick Sim- 
mons, a charming and accomplished man, — a 
little too fine, perhaps, for this world. I am, 
therefore, personally led to reflect with shame on 
the sternness with which I had refused every 
effort which he made, when I was in college, 
to render my life agreeable to me. He was a 
proctor, who lived in the next room to me when 
I was a freshman. 

I lived for two years in the same entry with 
Jones Very, whose sonnets, written at that time, 
have been of value to me since, which I will not 
try to express. He was our proctor. But I have 
no recollection of ever entering his room, though 



Harvard Revisited 353 

he offered me his hospitality in the most cordial 
and courteous way. I make these two mortify- 
ing confessions because I think they may be of 
use to men who are as young now as I was then. 
A few years afterward I lost my only opportunity 
of talking with Allston because I had some ridicu- 
lous evening engagement, which of course I have 
long since forgotten. Hcbc narraiio docet what 
young people who hear me preach know very 
well, — that it is always well to talk with people 
who are wiser than you. 

All these personal reminiscences may readily 
be compared with observations made now in any 
of the great colleges. There is hardly a detail to 
which I have referred where matters are not quite 
different now. Of such details I will speak before 
I have done. There is certainly an interesting 
question how far, with us, they have been affected 
by the very important changes which have come 
into the government of the university between 
that time and this. A college which was little 
more than a high school has been changed into 
a university. How far did this change come from 
pre-ordained changes of method of administra- 
tion, and how far is it the result of the growth of 
the country in wealth and of the growth of the 
world in intelligence? 

Old Dr. Dwight, who was a very wise as well as 
a very amusing person, now wholly forgotten, says 
in his journal, when he visits Bowdoin College, 
23 



354 Sixty Years 

that the plan of the government of that college 
is the same as that of Harvard College, namely, 
that it has two boards of government, whose only- 
business is to quarrel with each other. The 
method of government of Yale College, of which 
he was president, was quite different: it was gov- 
erned wholly by Dr. Dwight, and any boards that 
there were stood out of his way. There are who 
say that this system has been continued at Yale 
in later times. Anybody who cares for the his- 
tory of such things might make an amusing study 
of the parallels and contrasts to be run between 
Yale and Harvard for a hundred years, resulting 
from this radical diversity. The theory of Har- 
vard College was that " The Corporation," as it 
is still called in very old-fashioned circles, was 
the executive of the college, and the Board of 
Overseers a sort of advisory or visitatorial body. 

From time to time, from very early times, the 
professors and tutors would protest; sometimes 
they would come almost into revolt. Edward 
Everett published a pamphlet to show that the 
professors were the proper Fellows of the col- 
lege, and ought to have some voice in the man- 
agement of it. But here was the Corporation, 
the " We are seven " of Dr. Weld's amusing poem, 
who had the keys and the money and the power. 
The Board of Overseers, by the original charter, 
consisted of the "Governor and Deputy Governor 
of the State, all the magistrates of this juris- 
diction, and the teaching elders [that is, the min- 



Harvard Revisited ^55 

isters] of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, 
Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester, and the Presi- 
dent of the college of the time being," This 
cumbrous board, after various changes, in 1814 
became a board made up mostly from the Senate 
of the State; that is to say, of forty laymen. 
There were also fifteen ministers of Concrrecfa- 
tional churches, and sundry and various people 
by subsequent election; and this lasted till 1852. 
Since 1866, thanks to an admirable arrangement 
driven through, one might say, by Mr. Darwin, 
Erastus Ware, the Overseers have been made up 
of the president and treasurer, and thirty persons 
chosen by the alumni at annual meetings. This 
practice has resulted in giving a Board of Over- 
seers of very great ability. It has the confidence 
of the community and of the college. 

But, oddly enough, the Board of Overseers has 
not, and never has had, any direct power except- 
ing in one contingency. When there is no presi- 
dent, the Corporation may not choose a president 
except by the permission of the Overseers. Dur- 
ing that interregnum the Overseers may frighten 
the Corporation as much as they choose or can. 
Excepting at that time, they can annoy them a 
good deal, but can do nothing directly. Presi- 
dent Eliot put the thing admirably in his in- 
augural, when he said : — 

" The real function of the Board of Overseers is 
to stimulate and watch the President and Fellows. 
Without the Overseers, the President and Fellows 



356 sixty Years 

would be a board of private trustees, self-perpetu- 
ated and self-controlled. Provided as it is with 
two governing boards, the University enjoys that 
principal safeguard of all American governments, 
— the natural antagonism between two bodies 
of different constitution, powers, and privileges. 
While having with the Corporation a common 
interest of the deepest kind in the welfare of 
the University and the advancement of learning, 
the Overseers should always hold towards the 
Corporation an attitude of suspicious vigilance. 
They ought always to be pushing and prying. 
It would be hard to overstate the importance 
of the public supervision exercised by the Board 
of Overseers. Experience proves that our main 
hope for the permanence and ever-widening in- 
fluence of the University must rest upon this 
double-headed organization." 

For this world is not carried on by the forms 
of written constitutions ; it is carried on by good 
sense. The Board of Overseers makes an admir- 
able medium between the Corporation and the 
public. If the Overseers give advice, with an 
intelligent president who knows mankind, that 
advice is very apt to be followed, and it is just 
as well that that advice should not be put in 
the form of an edict. I had the honor of serving 
on the board for fifteen years, more or less, and 
it is the only board on which I ever served 
which was not a nuisance. At this board, on the 
other hand, the debates are of the greatest inter- 



Harvard Revisited 357 

est, and the conclusions are often of very great 
importance. But sixty years ago all this was dif- 
ferent. The college Faculty met once a week, and 
determined whether Jones should have an oration 
or Smith should be suspended. The Corpo- 
ration also met once a fortnight, I think, and de- 
termined whether Casaubon should be appointed 
professor or Scaliger continue another year as 
tutor. If the truth were to be told, I do not 
think the president was much more than the 
clerk of the Corporation. The poor fellow had 
a deal of office work to do, and unless he were 
a man fond of detail he must have winced under 
it. I have told here the story how, a few years 
afterward, the first official duty of President 
Everett was to see that the carpet of Madam Pet- 
tigrew's pew in the chapel was properly swept. 
The Corporation had not much money to spend, 
they spent it as well as they could, they put in 
the professors and tutors, — so many for the under- 
graduate department, so many more for the pro- 
fessional schools, — and then they let the thing go. 
As to the Corporation, one speaks of it even 
to-day with bated breath. It chose, as it still 
chooses, its own members, who hold for life; 
but the choice is subject to the approval of the 
Overseers. There was in old times a theory 
that there should be one representative of each 
'• learned profession " on the Corporation, but 
in my time there was no physician ; Dr. Walker 
represented divinity. The five other members 



358 Sixty Years 

of the board, beside the president, were Judge 
Story, Nathaniel Bowditch, Mr. Francis C. Gray 
(succeeded by Mr. John A. Lowell), and Mr. 
Charles G. Loring. People who remember the 
Boston of fifty years ago will agree with me that 
it would be hard to find a board more distin- 
guished. There was a little cynical criticism 
that the Salem element was very strong in it, 
but the Essex County element has always been 
so good in Massachusetts life that nobody seri- 
ously finds fault with it. These six gentlemen, 
with Josiah Quincy, the President, did what they 
chose with the college. Its afi"airs seldom got 
into the newspaper, and, generally speaking, I 
think people were disposed to let it run on its 
own wheels in its own way. 

But in conversation, for five-and-twenty years 
after this time, there was more or less speculation 
as to why, if it were called a university, it should 
not be a university. A visible stimulus in such 
conversation was the Phi Beta Kappa oration of 
Dr. Hedge in the year 1850. Most of the Phi 
Beta orations had had a great deal of the same 
sort in them, but Hedge spoke with authority, 
because he had himself been at Gottingen, and 
so far knew what he was talking about. It is not 
the place of this paper to review the history of the 
changes, which seem marvellous, which have made 
the university of to-day. All that I am asked to 
do is to compare the methods of to-day with the 
method of sixty years ago. A review of the his- 



Flarvard Revisited 359 

tory would have little interest to any one outside 
the college circle, and I have said almost all that 
I can say in the reminiscences which I have 
already given in this magazine. 

After the freshman year, the undergraduate of 
to-day has very large latitude in his choice of 
studies. Sixty years ago, he might select the 
modern language he would study, and when he 
became a senior he might go on with Latin and 
Greek or not, as he chose ; but practically these 
were the only matters left open to his choice. It 
followed that every man, when he graduated, had 
a certain knowledge of the externals of science and 
criticism, which I think the graduates of to-day 
hardly claim. He had an outside knowledge, 
little more, in the half dozen ranges of inquiry 
which were then classified as separate sciences. 
On the other hand, it was simply impossible for 
a man to go as far as any well-intentioned under- 
graduate can go now, in any study. No matter 
how much a man might be interested in philology, 
what he might do in college was simply to trans- 
late such and such books, and that was the end of 
it; nobody meant to teach him philology, — of 
W'hich, indeed, nobody excepting Mr. Felton knew 
much. If a man were interested in English litera- 
ture, he could work it up, as I said Mr. Lowell 
did Beaumont and Fletcher; but it was nobody's 
business to tell him whether Beaumont were a 
writer under Darius Hystaspes, or Fletcher one of 
the authors of the Vedas. In this remark I think 



360 Sixty Years 

I have stated what is substantially the contrast be- 
tween that high school of 1835 and the university 
of to-day. 

It must be remembered that the annual income 
of the college in 1842 was $225,561. Its annual 
income now, as recorded by the treasurer in his 
last report, is $1,201,908. In the same year, 
1894-95, the treasurer received from what he 
calls " receipts exclusive of income," meaning 
new gifts and incidental or occasional receipts, 
$1,900,000. The total funds in 1842 were $680,- 
649; in 1895 they were $8,381,586. Such fig- 
ures alone are enough to show the world-wide 
difference between what was done then and what 
is attempted with so great success now. Yet if 
anybody is audacious enough to compare the all- 
round information, say, of Jared Sparks in mat- 
ters of history with the accomplishments of gentle- 
men who have to deal with history to-day, why, 
let him make the comparison. Only let him re- 
member that the business of the college of that 
day was to make all-round scholars, while the 
business of the college to-day is to make men 
skilful in their respective departments of science 
or of study. 

This is certain, that the university of to-day 
gains immensely over the college of that time in its 
nationality. Dr. Beers says, in the book to which 
I have referred, that the college of that time was 
equipped mostly by men of eastern Massachusetts, 
and was for students from eastern Massachusetts. 



Harvard Revisited 361 

This is as true as most epigrams are. But it is 
quite sure that, of the professors of that time, 
almost all had grown up in this region of country. 
Longfellow came from as far away as Portland ; 
Beck came from Germany; the foreign-language 
gentlemen were all, I think, natives of European 
countries. But for the rest, they were Yankees, 
and had the instincts and prejudices of Yankees. 
Now it is an advantage which cannot be overesti- 
mated, to the undergraduate of to-day, that he 
falls in with gentlemen from Japan and other parts 
of Asia, from Europe, from Canada, from South 
America, from the shores of the Pacific Ocean, 
and probably from every State of the forty- five. 
He has among his professors such men as Shaler, 
Royce, Bocher, Sumichrast, Lanman, Francke, — 
not to go farther than the first page of the cata- 
logue, — men who really know that there is a 
nation called the United States, west and south of 
the Hudson River. The provincialism which was 
almost a necessary element, and an important ele- 
ment, in the Harvard College of 1830 and 1840 
exists no longer. There was at that time, un- 
doubtedly, a notion that it would be better if the 
professors could all be graduates of our own col- 
lege. Longfellow was from Bowdoin, but as I 
look over one of the old catalogues I do not 
observe any other professor who was not a 
Harvard graduate, excepting the gentlemen from 
Europe. Now we are glad to welcome, from all 
climes and all schools of training, whoever can 



362 Sixty Years 

help us. There is no such thing as Prussian 
algebra or Carolinian optics or Californian divin- 
ity; and the undergraduate of to-day may go to 
Cambridge as narrow and bigoted as most fresh- 
men are, but after four years he will come out 
with a great deal of such nonsense taken out of 
him. The most important part of that nonsense 
will be his impression that he is a person of any 
great importance himself. 

In the same years he will slowly lose the other 
impression, that the particular place in which he 
was born had any special importance in the theory 
of the good God for the constitution of the uni- 
verse. If one get only this out of four years of 
college, he has gained what he gains in no 
other method of training for life with which I 
am acquainted. 



Living close to Cambridge, and always well ac- 
quainted with many of the officers and students, I 
never lost the tie which binds one to his Alma 
Mater. In 1866, after the graduates had re- 
ceived the power to choose the Overseers, I was 
honored by election to a seat in that body, and I 
retained that position until the year 1875. I saw, 
of course, the beginning of the admirable advance 
which the university has made under the direction 
of President Eliot, whom we still call " the young 
president." 



Harvard Revisited 363 

For most of this time I was chairman of the com- 
mittee in the Divinity School. James Freeman 
Clarke was greatly interested in the work of the 
school, of which he was a graduate, as I was not. 
He always pressed earnestly upon the Overseers 
the possibility of establishing a school at Cam- 
bridge which should meet the needs of more than 
one Christian communion. And he lived to see 
his wish, to a considerable degree, carried out. 
The Divinity School of to-day has professors and 
students who represent the Unitarian Church, the 
Universalist Church, the Baptist Church, the 
Orthodox Congregational body, and the Prot- 
estant Episcopal Church of America. 

In the year 1886 it was determined, at first as a 
temporary measure, that the clerical members of 
the Board of Overseers should take the charge of 
the chapel service. These gentlemen at that time 
were Phillips Brooks, Alexander McKenzie, and 
myself; and we divided between us the daily 
chapel services of each year. I think I was the 
first person, not a college professor, who acted in 
this capacity. 

A very interesting service it was. We had an 
admirable choir, under the training of Mr. Payne, 
the professor of music. And we had in attend- 
ance every morning the largest congregation of 
men, as I venture to say, which met in the whole 
world for the reverent worship of God. 

In the same year, when compulsory attendance at 
chapel was discontinued at Harvard, six Preachers 



364 Sixty Years 

to the University were appointed, o^ whom I was 
one, to whom was intrusted the conduct of the 
daily rehgious service and of the Sunday services. 

This office, under the rules which we made, de- 
mands of the preacher during his term of residence 
that he shall, every morning, be in the " minister's 
room," to meet any undergraduates who care to 
wait upon him. The intimacies thus formed are 
of the most interesting character; and in the midst 
of other pressing duty, I always enjoyed extremely 
the six weeks' service which I thus gave to the 
college. 

In 1876 and 1877, I ^^^^ honored by a choice as 
president of Phi Beta Kappa. This means that 
you preside at the annual meeting of the society 
and at its dinner, which is the most satisfactory 
of all the Cambridge observances. 

As four of my sons have gone through Harvard, 
I have been kept in close touch with the college 
which I did not leave when a New England 
Boyhood ended. 

In 1866 I became a trustee of Antioch College 
in Ohio. This appointment gave me an intimacy, 
not simply with the work of education in the mid- 
dle States, but with leaders of opinion there. I 
retained this position until the present summer, 
when my friend Mr. James De Normandie was 
appointed in my place. 



THE MINISTRY OF THE GOSPEL AND 
PERMANENT PEACE 

Dr. Andrew Preston Peabody in an address 
delivered at Cambridge a generation ago said 
that "every man should have a vocation and an 
avocation." The epigram is excellent, and gives 
an excellent working rule for life. It will be found 
in many places in these volumes. But I ought 
to say in passing that philologically the words 
'•vocation " and " avocation " do not have the con- 
trasted meaning which the epigram requires. 

The good sense of the statement is all the same, 
— philology notwithstanding. Work is best done 
when it is relieved from time to time by other 
work, — in a different channel. 

The chapters in this book, on which this reader 
has, perhaps, cast his eye, relate to many of 
what may be called "avocations " — what the 
critics would call " excursions " — in the main duty 
of the Christian ministry. To this ministry I have 
tried to devote my life. I was ordained to it in 
Worcester in April, 1846. My appointment to it 
was confirmed when I was installed as minister of 
the South Congregational Church in Boston. As 



366 Sixty Years 

the minister of that church I have tried to do my 
duty since. I have just now resigned the charge. 

I do not, however, attempt here the serious duty 
which would be implied in any effort to describe, 
even briefly, the life of a New England minister, 
— though that life were my own. It would be an 
interesting thing to do this, if one could do it well. 
But to do it at all would be difficult — to do it 
well, if one may judge from many failures, seems 
nearly or quite impossible. 

The life of a man whose first duty is to sacrifice 
himself to others, or to set aside his immediate 
purpose, if he can advance the higher life or the 
better purpose of others, must, from the nature of 
the case, be unsystematic. Those of us who are 
in the profession of the ministry say among our- 
selves, that no one of us knows in the morning 
where he shall be, or what he shall do, before 
night. I am in the habit of saying to the young 
gentlemen who come into my office as my " as- 
sistants," that I will never ask them to do any- 
thing which I would not do myself; but that this 
condition may involve blacking John Phelan's 
boots or putting up the Widow Flaherty's stove. 
We are in the habit of saying that life, in our pro- 
fession, is a series of surprises and of romances. 

Thus, I have twice in my life made the acquaint- 
ance, somewhat intimate, with people of the very 
highest rank in the feudal aristocracy of Europe. 
In one case the friendship began when I gave to 
my new friend a slice of cold mutton and a pair of 



Permanent Peace 367 

pantaloons. After he had regained his posses- 
sions in Europe, he invited me to visit him in 
the elegant castle which he inherited from his 
ancestors. Of the other of these friendships, I 
could tell a more striking contrast between pov- 
erty and comfort in after years, but I ought not 
to speak of it in print. Our duties are commonly 
spoken of as if we studied Hebrew all the morn- 
ing, and chatted with aged beggars all the after- 
noon. In truth, the duties and the privileges of 
the ministry range through the widest possible 
horizons of life. Our great master and friend, 
Henry Whitney Bellows was known for the last 
half of his life as the leader of our Unitarian 
ministry in America. After his death, a gentle- 
man on the Pacific coast wrote to me the detail of 
anxious weeks, forty years before, in New York, 
when his young bride was lying sick with small- 
pox in a New York hotel. The keeper of the 
hotel wanted to turn her out, and when this 
proved impossible, he boycotted them. Bellows 
was the only person they knew in New York; 
and, in his capacity as minister of the All Souls 
Church, he took the daily care of that sick-room, 
attending twice a day to what men call the menial 
services of a sick-room, and teaching those young 
travellers the lesson of the hymn, — 

" Who sweeps a room, if this the cause. 
Makes that and the action fine." 

In the system of government which has evolved 



368 Sixty Years 

itself in New England in two hundred and eighty- 
years, the same men control the arrangements of 
what we still call the Church with those of what 
we still call the State. The man who votes for 
a governor on Monday, may vote perhaps for a 
minister on Tuesday. The State assumes duties 
in charity, in education, in hygiene which would, 
two hundred years ago, have everywhere been 
said to belong to the Church. In the week in 
which I write, I have sent to the same person 
the pension which the State pays to him to-day, 
and the similar pension which our Church pays 
to him for precisely the same reasons. The chair- 
man of the Board of Charities in this church is at 
the same time the chairman of the Board of Over- 
seers of the Poor of the city of Boston. The 
South Friendly society of this church sends twice 
a year to Taunton the clothing for an aged in- 
sane woman whom the State of Massachusetts 
maintains in its hospital. 

Practically, the New England Church assumes 
the duty which under the Roman Catholic system 
of Europe belongs to the Priesthood. Practically, 
then, it is impossible for a minister who has been 
in service half a century to say which part of his 
life has belonged to his " vocations " and which to 
his " avocations." 

At this time, — in the " Annus Mirabilis " which 
has seen twenty-four nations unite in the great con- 
ference at The Hague, — and strike out in seventy 
days the proposal for an International Court for 



Permanent Peace 369 

which the world has been waiting for nineteen cen- 
turies, — I shall close this volume of Biography 
by reprinting some of the addresses and reports 
which in twenty years I have been presenting to 
my public regarding A Permanent Tribunal. 

As a statement of my theory of Church and 
State, I print first the Election Sermon of 1859 
which I delivered in the Old South Church 
before the Governor and the General Court. 



24 



A SERMON 

[Delivered before Governor Banks, the Lieutenant- 
Governor, THE Council, and the General Court, 
Jan. s, 1859.] 

" Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given 
to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the pro- 
portion of faith ; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering ; or 
he that teacheth, on teaching ; or he that exhorteth, on exhorta- 
tion. He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity ; he that 
ruleth, with diligence." — Romans xii. 6, 7, 8. 

This text describes the duties of the different 
ofificers in a Christian community, and the way in 
which they discharge them. It shows that the 
inspiration of rulers, of preachers, or of the admin- 
istrators of charities, is one and the same spirit. 
It belongs thus to this service. For this service 
is the public and formal proclamation, for this 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, of the relation 
which here connects the officers of the State and 
the officers of the Church. 

The careless political speakers, and speakers 
from the pulpit as careless, are, indeed, apt to say, 
that under our system, the Church and the State 
are entirely divorced from each other. This care- 
less proposition, however, is radically false, and 
every corollary drawn from it is false, as well. It 



A Sermon 371 

is true, that, in that profound philosophy which 
has ordered both our system of political govern- 
ment and our S}'stem of religious administration, 
the place of every officer is quite distinctly defined. 
And therefore, we do not have bishops usurping 
the functions of judges, nor Secretaries of State 
usurping the functions of preachers, any more 
than we have judges usurping the functions of 
Secretaries of State, or major-generals usurping 
the functions of everybody. But we might as 
well say, therefore, that there is no intimate rela- 
tion between the Judiciary and the Legislature, 
as to say that there is no intimate relation between 
the Church and State. 

When, in 1848, the new revolutions of Europe 
had spread general enthusiasm among all the 
young liberals of the world, I happened to express 
that enthusiasm to one of the most learned states- 
men of our time, — himself an exile from Ger- 
many.i I spoke, with a young man's eager hope, 
of the work of that Constituent Assembly in 
France, which had been summoned at the bidding 
of Lamartine. But my older and more learned 
friend replied, *' What have you in France for a 
foundation? What will your new constitution 
stand upon?" It could not stand upon any well- 
drained and compacted basis of old village, town, 
or province administration. France knows no 
such system. Not upon any mass of traditions 

1 This was Dr. Francis Lieber, then Professor in the University 
of South Carolina. 



3/2 Sixty Years 

regarding ancient customs, making a great un- 
written constitutional law, — than which " the 
memory of man goes not to the contrary," — like 
that of England. France knows no such tradi- 
tions. The prairie fires of the last century have 
burned every straw and shred of them from her 
soil. Not upon the well-knit force of a landed or 
a learned aristocracy. The same prairie fires have 
destroyed these growths as they have those of 
humbler herbage. Not upon the sense of right. 
The French people, as a people, have no such 
adequate sense of the higher law. Not upon the 
belief in God. The French people, as a people, 
have no adequate sense of God. 

" The only existing reality in France," said my 
philosophic friend, " strong enough to bear up the 
weight of a government, and so serve as its foun- 
dation, is the army. The constitution of France 
must be based upon its army." And his prophecy 
proved true. 

Our fortune in Massachusetts, our blessed good 
fortune in Massachusetts, is, — that when Winthrop 
and Johnson and Dudley and the other sainted 
statesmen, or statesmen saints, of the beginning, 
had to build the constitution of what was even 
then the independent Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, and what they meant should continue 
such forever, they had something to build upon. 
They had the sense of justice or the love of right, 
as the spirit of God planted it new each day in the 
hearts of godly Englishmen. And they had the 



A Sermon 373 

pervading, overwhelming sense of the God who so 
communes with His children. On this belief in 
God they built their Commonwealth. They be- 
lieved His Church to be essential and eternal, and 
they built their State upon it. They knew what 
was the Rock against which the gates of hell 
should not prevail. And, having to rear a Com- 
monwealth which they meant should out-last Eng- 
land, out-last Venice, and out-last Rome, — upon 
that Rock they builded. 

It is true, that, in that constant process of 
simplification which is an organic element in a 
republican system, we have struck out of existence 
many of the forms by which they intimated the 
mutual relation between the functions of the 
Church and of the State. The State, for in- 
stance, no longer requires that all its voters 
shall be church members; nor, on the other 
hand, does the Church any longer collect its 
revenues, as it did within a generation, by the 
authority of the State. But it ought to be rec- 
ollected that even so great changes in administra- 
tion are simply changes in detail. They do not 
affect at the heart's core the system on which the 
first fathers built, when they built so much better 
than they knew. The suffrage of the State has 
become universal. Yes ; and practically the suf- 
frage of the Church has become universal, too. 
You do not hear of one of our Churches, even of 
the closest organization, which refuses the contri- 
butions of those not members of its close organi- 



374 Sixty Years 

zation, or which refuses their votes, either in the 
settlement of a minister, in the erection of a meet- 
ing-house, or in any of the other practical affairs by 
which a Church certifies its real existence to the 
world. Whoever is enough interested in the service 
to contribute to the service becomes a voter, and so 
far a master in the regulation of the service. It is 
just as in that civil order to which you owe your 
election, we have decided that whoever bears a part 
of the burdens of the State shall hold an equal share 
with every other man in its power. And this is 
but an instance of the vital, electric connection 
between the one department of administration 
and the other. In this same way we shall go 
on. You, statesmen, may continue to simplify 
to the utmost, the arrangements of our political 
system; and we, the Church's men, may continue 
to simplify to the utmost the details of our eccle- 
siastical system. Still there remain, first, the 
great historical fact, that the State of Massachu- 
setts stratified and took order as a secondary geo- 
logic formation upon that majestic, primitive rock 
of the Churches of Massachusetts, upon which rest 
all her stratifications since: and, second, the pres- 
ent fact, the bald, commonplace statement of that 
simple truth which this historical statement illus- 
trates, — that, in our system the working powers 
of the State and of the Church are really one and 
the same. The statesmen are really Church's men, 
and the Church's men are really State's men. The 
men who vote for representatives and senators, and 



A Sermon 375 

secretaries and governors to-day, are, or may be, 
the same men who vote for deacons, or vestry- 
men, or ministers, or bishops to-morrow. If they 
are excluded from any elective body, it is simply 
their own will which excludes them. The indif- 
ference of the voter excludes him from participa- 
tion in the affairs of the State ; the indifference of 
the voter excludes him from a participation in the 
affairs of the Church. But the Church does not 
attempt to govern itself by a hierarchy, any more 
than the State attempts to govern itself by an aris- 
tocracy. The State has caught the voice of the 
spirit; — and by every appeal repeats it — 

" Come who will, a voice from heaven 
Like a silver trumpet calls, 
Come who will, The Church has given 
Back the echo from its walls ! " 

There is not any other Christian country in the 
world where Church and State acknowledge so 
radically that, at bottom, the machinery of all 
their administration is intrusted to the same 
hands. There is not, consequently, the coun- 
try in the world where they exchange djitics so 
often or so easily. In just the same proportion 
does the service of to-day become real, — when, 
by the invitation of the servants of the State, a 
servant of the Church appears before them, to 
pass in review the duties which the people intrust 
to the hands of both parties, to find the mutual 
relations of both parties in these duties, and to 
state, even succinctly, what each has a right to 



37^ Sixty Years 

expect of the other. The same sovereign 
which in Massachusetts has directed some two 
thousand of us to act as ministers in its religious 
concerns, has set apart, you, gentlemen, and those 
who serve, in the government of the several towns, 
to be their ministers of State in a very large vari- 
ety of concerns. If we follow the classification of 
the text, we have intrusted to us the " prophecy" 
and "exhortation" or preaching, — a part of the 
"ministering" and part of the "teaching." But 
you of the civil government have, intrusted to 
3^ou, even a larger share of the " ministering," 
and " teaching," — and, as to the charities of 
which the apostle speaks, you have almost all 
of the duty of " the givers," while you have the 
whole of the duty of " the rulers." Your services 
and our services thus lap over each other. In the 
discharge of our duties, we meet every day with 
the officers you appoint, and have to submit our- 
selves to the statutes you frame. And on the other 
hand, rulers though you are, your laws are chaff 
and your sway is nothing, unless you rule as the 
subjects of the King who is alike your master and 
ours. 

My object then, to-day, is perfectly defined, 
though twofold. We have only these two ques- 
tions to answer: First — What have we, minis- 
ters of the Church, a right to expect of you, 
in our interwoven duty? Second — What have 
you, ministers of the State, a right to expect of us? 

And because it is rather your business to tell 



A Sermon 377 

us what you expect of us, I shall speak chiefly 
of the first of these two questions now. 

As things are, what have we, ministers of the 
Church, in this mutual duty of ours, to expect 
of you? 

I. First — and simply then, we ask you to 
remember how far you became this day minis- 
ters of the gospel, — ministers of the Christian 
Church. We remind you that the larger pro- 
portion of your duty in the government is speci- 
fically Christian duty. In truth — though we 
call you, in conversation, officers of the State, 
still, in the arrangement of which we have been 
speaking, the larger part of those duties to so- 
ciety, which the Christian Church created, in- 
vented, and is responsible for, here devolve on 
you. So little divorced are State and Church 
in practice. If you had only the duties which 
a Roman legislator had, before Rome was Chris- 
tian, — or which a Roman civilian has now, — 
diminished by the withdrawing of those impor- 
tant functions which the Federal Government has 
taken off your hands, you would have little indeed 
to do. In fact, however, besides that little hand- 
ful of civil trifles, you have an immense Christian 
duty for which the people, rulers of the Church 
here, have made you their agents. If I had met 
this morning any scholar not acquainted with our 
institutions, but trained well in that theory of 
government which was the only theory two cen- 



3/8 Sixty Years 

turies ago, — if I had said to such a man that 
I was to address to-day some hundred men, who 
had the oversight of all our hospitals for the 
sick, the insane, the blind, deaf, and dumb, — the 
charge of all our hospitals for crime — our pris- 
ons and reform schools ; — the charge again of 
our chief arrangements for the poor, whether of 
our own number or strangers, — the charge of all 
the hospitality extended by this community, as 
a community, to foreigners; and also the charge 
of all the education given to all the children and 
all the young men in this community, — such a 
man, — supposing things regulated under the sys- 
tem to which Luther was accustomed, or Hamp- 
den, or to which any Roman Cardinal is used 
to-day, — would take it for granted that you, 
whom I was to address, were a body of clergy- 
men, of parish priests, doctors of divinity, monks, 
abbots, or bishops. Indeed, there is no standard 
Christian treatise on government till you come 
down to times almost within our memory, which 
does not take it for granted, that it is the special 
business of the Church to teach the young, to 
provide for the higher institutions of learning, to 
care for strangers, to rear and support hospitals, 
and to relieve the poor. And this is the business 
of the Church. Jesus Christ introduced these 
duties into society. By a modern discovery, by 
no means universal yet, it has been proved that 
the Church does all this work most efficiently 
when it puts it into the hands of the so-called 



A Sermon 379 

officers of State to accomplish. None the less, 
however, is it Christian service. This is a modern 
discovery, because it is a Protestant discovery, ■ — 
which is indeed in large measure an American 
discovery and almost wholly a Massachusetts dis- 
covery. True, the Protestant rulers of England 
had hit on the plan of poor relief by State in part 
— instead of church officers. But for education 
they made no such discovery. It was the first 
planters of Massachusetts who discovered that 
the Church must educate everybody ; — who, there- 
fore, gave education to the management of the 
town meeting, which was with them a church 
meeting; and it is an extension of that same 
policy, from which your State hospitals, and State 
Schools of Reform have grown. 

I have to remind you, therefore, that the Gen- 
eral Court of Massachusetts is the administrator 
of the largest single system of Christian charities 
in the world. The system intrusted to you em- 
braces more points of supervision than any Oecu- 
menical council, — any Roman conclave, — or any 
English Parliament ever had in hand. 

The reform of 14,000 criminals yearly; the cure 
of a thousand lunatics and idiots; the reception of 
10,000 exiles; the finding eyes for all the blind, 
and ears for all the deaf, and tongues for all the 
dumb; the education of 200,000 children; and 
the expenditure of a million for the poor: — 
these are the duties, Christ-imposed, which under 
our system fall under your direction and super- 



380 Sixty Years 

vision, I might almost take the pecuniary amount 
expended annually for these charges, raised by 
taxation at your order, and say that it is a larger 
amount than any board in the world administers 
for its specially Christian purposes. There are 
one or two exceptions, where Empires have in 
hand larger sums. But nowhere is there a mil- 
lion of people, who give to one body such a vari- 
ety and amount of Christian philanthropic duty, 
as the million men now in Massachusetts have 
intrusted, gentlemen, to you. 

It is not I, who magnify your ofhce in thus 
speaking. This is simply the result which must 
follow where a Church becomes truly Catholic or 
universal, and says, " Everybody shall be fed, — 
everybody shall be nursed, — everybody shall be 
taught in this land." That Church intrusts such 
Christian service to those officers who have an eye 
on every household, and a strong arm for every 
purse; — who can command the last farthing of 
every man's property before one of these functions 
should fail. I remind you, gentlemen, that yoit 
are administrators of a trust of such unequalled 
magnificence, — more than princely — princes 
cannot do such things, — more than imperial — no 
Emperor has ever dreamed of them. I speak of 
this trust in its details, because on our side we have 
a feeling that your predecessors have not always 
appreciated its grandeur. We ask you, frankly, if 
the little handful of civil duties left them has not 
often received more attention than the principles 



A Sermon 381 

of this immense Christian social charge. We think, 
for a single instance, that the reports show that in 
the last twenty years, the Legislature of Massachu- 
setts has spent ten times the strength, and care, 
and watch, and deliberation on the system of the 
State Printing, that it has given to the careful, deli- 
cate questions as to the system of the State Prison. 
We have a feeling that there has often been more 
eager thought and discussion on the appointment 
of a bridge agent or a lamp-lighter with a salary, — 
than has ever been demanded by the choice of the 
unpaid overseers of either of the three colleges. 
We think we have seen a tendency to transfer to 
the next General Court, — that morrow which 
never comes, — the delicate questions relating to 
the settlement of paupers, which have been post- 
poned, in that way, since the time of Queen Eliza- 
beth, — the management of reform schools, — even 
the discipline of the town schools, where all our 
children go. And these are but instances ; for, to 
speak in general, we think that has often been true 
of the State, which is so often true of individual 
men, that the matters which get attended to are 
the matters of to-day, those things which connect 
with some personal interest of the present time. 
With Government, as with individuals, we think 
these have obtained more thought and study, 
more system, more care in short, than most of the 
questions, which by consent of all, connect dis- 
tinctly with the relations of eternity. We admit, 
with you, that on the whole the best government 



382 Sixty Years 

is that which governs least. If there is any cour- 
teous way to say it, — the shorter any session the 
better, — of a committee, whether parish or legis- 
lative, — of a conference, whether in the church or 
between the two Houses, — of a council, whether 
clerical or executive, — of a Court, whether Eccle- 
siastical, or Great and General. Still we feel it 
remarkable, that, in attaining such brevity, it has 
happened so often, that the merest detail of police 
is attended to, — while those functions which are 
the direct requisitions of the spirit of Christ, have 
been so often the functions left dormant till a more 
convenient season. 

There is no fair complaint to be made that your 
predecessors have failed in liberality. We only 
ask for system equal to this liberality. They have 
given like water. We remind you that " he who 
giveth must give with simplicity." Gentlemen, 
there are already careful students of social science, 
who declare that every dollar spent by your official 
Overseers of the Poor, does more harm than good. 
We have the right to ask you to see that no such 
charges as that come to be true. Asking that, — 
I have spoken at such length in reminding you 
that the administration of the charities and of the 
education of Massachusetts is by far the largest as 
well as the most important branch of duty which 
the Government has in hand. 

You do not meet simply to see that no town 
encroaches on another's lines. It is not simply to 
see that there are enous^h railroads built for those 



A Sermon 383 

who would travel, or enough banks chartered for 
those who would borrow and lend, that we the 
people, acting as the children of God, have bidden 
you come together. Nay, it is not what the old 
witticism makes it — to see that twelve honest men 
be got into a jury box in every contest between 
man and man. That can be done without a legis- 
lature, if not quite so conveniently. Two years' 
experience of the law-abiding people of Kansas, 
showed how well Americans can adjust their daily 
affairs and live at peace among themselves without 
any statutes, without any government. No, gen- 
tlemen, that is not all your duty, nor half your 
duty. That is only your local, present duty, — 
the hand-to-mouth duty of an hour. You are met 
because there are these thousand weak creatures 
in your prisons whose wives and children are im- 
ploring you by my voice, that these men may come 
forth stronger than they went in. You are met 
because there are these thousand famished exiles 
landing on your shores asking you how they shall 
serve you, where and when. You are met because 
the chatter of idiocy, yes, even the dead, still, mut- 
tering glare of insanity, have called you and plead 
with you, with an awful, unrivalled eloquence, to 
say that God has trusted to you only their relief 
and care. You are met because your own chil- 
dren, the bone of your bone, the blood of your 
blood, children, also, of an eternal God, are at this 
moment in your schools receiving the daily train- 
ing which is to fit them for active life, or to unfit 



384 Sixty Years 

them. And with you, in the principles you lay 
down, comes the decision whether it shall do the 
one thing or the other ! 

II. If I seem to state this too broadly, gentle- 
men, let me, for the second point I make, call your 
attention to one single detail of this duty. That 
shall serve as my only illustration of my position. 
It seems certain that in a most important depart- 
ment of the Christian duty, which you of the gov- 
ernment and we of the organized churches share, 
somebody, somewhere, has made a terrible failure. 
Perhaps it is we on our side who have neglected 
the weightier matters of the Law, Judgment, 
Mercy, and Faith, in our contests about things 
which the angels only desire to look into, and 
do not examine. Perhaps there has been a simi- 
lar oversight on the other side. In eager effort 
to arrange that the right man should be in the 
right place, those intrusted like you with the most 
important practical functions of Church and State 
together, have been tempted, maybe, just as we 
have been. I think we have all been to blame. 
I am sure somebody has been at fault, when I 
find from your documents that in the last thirteen 
years preceding your last returns, the amount of 
crime in this State, as shown by a number of per- 
sons committed to your prisons, had tripled. You 
have had, in that time, to double your prison ac- 
commodations. We have not had to double our 
churches, our schools, or our dwelling-houses. 



A Sermon 385 

Our population has not tripled itself in thirteen 
years, it has not doubled, it has not gained one- 
half. It is only our crime. Now, this is a very 
ugly symptom of social disease. It is a symptom 
to which we can shut our eyes. We have shown 
that. But is it, on the whole, very wise to shut 
our eyes to it? People well-informed say that 
crime is a contagious disease. Do you like to let 
contagious disease go, by so simple a process 
as shutting your eyes to it? In fact, if this dis- 
ease, crime, — which eats into men's hearts, which 
destroys the very essence of their manliness, de- 
bauches and torpifies, where it does not even 
kill, their souls, — if it had been a mere bodily 
disease, putting in peril or in pain this flesh and 
blood, which are as nothing in comparison, should 
we have shut our eyes to it, should have let it 
gain head so steadily? If Dr. Shurtleff reported 
this year that the deaths in Massachusetts had 
been three times as many as they were fourteen 
years ago; that consumption struck three times 
as many victims; that scarlet fever crept into 
men's houses three times as often; — if the re- 
ports of your insane hospitals said that there 
were three times as many people crazy; if from 
the blind and deaf and dumb asylums they said 
there were three times as many people who could 
not see or speak or hear? — should we take that 
perfectly calmly, as a Turk takes the visitation 
of God? Should we say " it is written," calmly 
pay every tax-bill threefold, quietly enlarge 

25 



386 sixty Years 

every hospital threefold, swhig open the creak- 
ing doors of the tomb three tunes as often, 
to lay there the bodies of our children, without 
agonizing, tearful, day and night inquiry into 
the causes of the miasma which was spreading 
in such deadly desolation through the land? 
Surely not. We should at least make a struggle 
to preserve our children, and while there was time, 
to drain the Pontine Marshes, wherever they 
might be, and to fill up the yawning abysses 
with whatever sacrifice science might demand, 
— until we either died in our effort, or could say 
that the plague was stayed. 

Now what is reported to us by the inspectors, 
keepers, and trustees of the prisons and schools, is 
that there has been such an increase of crime. If 
there is any sign of moral disease the prison re- 
turns and the Attorney-General's records give that 
statistic. Of contagious disease as much more 
terrible than these bodily diseases, as the soul is 
greater than the body, or heaven is higher than 
the earth, we have this testimony. There is 
only one distinction between the fact and the 
case which I have supposed. It is this. In 
controlling bodily disease, we do not profess to 
have any absolute specific or panacea. Science, 
as it grows more scientific, is all the more eager 
to disclaim specifics or panaceas for the body. 
But it is not so with Moral Disease. A Chris- 
tian commonwealth proclaims every day, through 
a thousand voices, that there is a remedy which 



A Sermon 387 

can be made everywhere effective. Through a 
thousand voices she speaks of one, named Jesus, 
— so named, because he shall save the people 
from their sins. Through a thousand voices she 
professes that crime is a curable disease, and that 
for its cure she has the sacred specifics intrusted 
to her. And then if she sit quiet — to see the 
amount of that disease multiply threefold upon 
her hands, as fourteen years go by, she is all the 
more responsible, because she professes to hold 
the cure. Or is she all the more hypocritical ! 
Which shall I say? 

Let me anticipate the easy excuse which has 
possibly flitted across some minds as I speak : that 
it is all the foreign emigration that has done this ; 
that we are imprisoning those who contracted 
their habits elsewhere. For the sake of Puritanism, 
gentlemen, I wish this were true. But, unfortu- 
nately, your fatal documents seem to show that 
the fact is just the other way; that native crime 
increases faster than foreign, if the ratio of popu- 
lation be kept in view. That is the impression of 
the persons best informed in criminal adminis- 
tration. That is the declaration of the returns 
of your State prison. It is impossible to speak 
with more confidence. For, as your predecessor, 
Mr. Secretary, said officially, the reports published 
by the State of its jails and houses of correction 
" are entitled to little or no credit " and " fail to 
give anything like a full or just view of them." 
In his own spirited effort to correct their omis- 



388 Sixty Years 

sions he thus alludes to the indifference which had 
long shrouded their capital errors. Take that, by 
the way, as a hint as to the degree in which the 
study of your criminal administration has escaped 
review. The fact demonstrated, is that we impris- 
oned three times as many men in 1857, as in 1844. 
The reason must be sought somewhere upon our 
own soil. 

Now, gentlemen, it is perfectly true, that the 
first responsibility in this matter is with the pris- 
oners themselves. I have no wish to deny that. 
It is also true that, so long as you and I were in 
private life, we had only a general share in an 
undivided responsibility about this moral disease, 
which we shared with a million other Massachu- 
setts men and women who are in private life. But 
the moment you and I took office as servants 
of a Christian State and a Christian Church, 
we assumed special responsibility with regard to 
the moral diseases of this community. We were 
chosen to office with the distinct duty of meeting 
them, handling them, repressing them, and, where 
we can, curing them. VVe have no right to stand 
back as if there was no responsibility. And I 
think the simple figures show that we have no 
right to say things are going on very well as they 
are. 

Three times as much crime to punish as we had 
fourteen years ago ! 

These figures make my appeal for me. You 
have in charge the whole criminal law. You have 



A Sermon 389 

in charge the whole administration of prisons. 
As before those tempted to crime, you represent 
the eternal will of God, His justice and His mercy. 
We beg you, gentlemen, to bear in mind the 
responsibility and the power which you have in 
hand. We beg you to lay down for yourselves 
the Christian principles on which you mean to 
exert it. On what principle do you propose to 
punish crime? Is it the principle of those writers 
w^ho say that the object of punishment is to inflict 
God's retribution for the crime? Or is it the 
principle of those who say that it is the reform of 
the prisoner? Or yet again, of those who say 
that it is terror to other ill-doers? Here are three 
completely distinct principles of conduct. It is 
not for me to say which is the true one. But I 
beg every man who hears me to ask himself which 
he believes to be the true one, and to act on that 
principle in measuring out the consequences of 
crime. In my profession, gentlemen, no man 
gives a moment's thought to the daily record of 
sin, as he reads it in the morning newspaper, with- 
out saying " this is the very thing Jesus Christ sent 
us to cure. Where is it we have fallen short? 
What have we left undone which has made it 
possible, for this clerk to defraud his employer, 
for this child to rob his mother, for this boy to 
kill his prison-keeper?" Your election to office, 
by the people, throws upon you the same respon- 
sibility, — and I should say in fuller measure, — 
which to us is so constantly and intensely familiar. 



390 Sixty Years 

" How happened this broil in this tavern? Who 
left these women in their iniquity, or who pre- 
tended to reform these orphan boys, and, in the 
effort, so completely failed ? " The moment, 
gentlemen, that you assumed office in the Com- 
monwealth, you shared with us this Christian 
responsibility. 

This shall be my only illustration of the special 
Christian duties intrusted to you under our system. 
Of those duties, making the chief division of my 
subject, I will say no more. We beg you to 
remember, that in your hands you have by far the 
largest share of those duties to the public which 
belong to the Christian Church. We agree with 
you, that this division of labor between you and 
us is the best possible. But as you have thus the 
charge of poverty, of public hospitality, of prisons 
and of the reform of criminals, and of education 
in every department, as we cannot undertake one 
of our professional duties in these matters without 
meeting you in yours, we beg you to assume that 
responsibility with the energy of Christian men. 
And, by way of illustration, in one very important 
subdivision of these duties — we remind you that 
the present aspect of affairs is not so encouraging, 
that you should lay it upon your table as unessen- 
tial, or postpone it to a General Court which is to 
succeed you, 

III. I have said that I would not close without 
a single word as to the special share which the 



A Sermon 391 

ministers of the Church have in this immense 
range of Christian duty. 

The division of duty between you and us seems 
to result naturally from the essential character of 
law. 

Laws and Constitutions must, from the nature 
of the case, deal with men in the general, as 
organized in society. In communities like ours, 
where all men are absolutely equal before the 
law, its work must be entirely general. It cannot 
bend to any exigency of detail. It knows nothing 
of exceptions. But, meanwhile, there is no single 
man who precisely conforms to the average of 
manhood. The equality of men before the law is 
their only equality. The exceptions which the 
law must not account for, are always occurring in 
fact, in the case of every man. And, therefore, 
you find our Saviour always providing for individ- 
uals, and never for classes. And to use Maffei's 
figure, — Christ's successful fishers of men draw 
men into his Church by the hook, and never by 
the net; — one by one, and never in shoals. There 
is, therefore, no theory about a class, or commu- 
nity, for which some exceptions may not be made, 
under his direction, for every single individual. 
Humanity, in the abstract, may require one thing; 
but the claim of each individual man is, to the 
Christ-trained ear, louder than the claim of human- 
ity. There is no doubt, for instance, that the 
prevention of pauperism requires, if that were all, 
the strictest limitation of alms-giving. But when 



392 Sixty Years 

you are dealing with a starving woman, her per- 
sonal claim on you as a dying sister, is stronger 
than any claim which the future can make. The 
future demands, vainly, that by stoic cruelty you 
deny her, let her starve, and so far check pauper- 
ism in the abstract. Each man is thus on a higher 
level than humanity as a whole. 

Now, your position, gentlemen, requires you to 
provide the great average system in the matters 
with which we deal, which is, on the whole, the 
best for all parties. We beg you to do that. 
When you have done it, you have a right to turn 
to the several Churches of the State, and say to 
us, " See you to the exceptions, to the details." 
Thus you are to make as perfect as you can the 
general system of instruction. When we find the 
individual case of the boy Pascal, unrivalled in his 
mathematical ability, of the girl Jenny Lind, of 
unrivalled musical capacity, it is for us to see 
that this new-found Pegasus is not worked in the 
wrong harness, and to provide distinctly and with 
delicate care for the detail. You make the general 
system of criminal law. It is for us to see that 
some Christian missionary is in attendance at every 
criminal court, to make certain and to report of 
the detailed difficulty, error, possible exception, 
betrayed in the case of everybody accused, to be 
his personal friend if he need ; and to interpret to 
your officers the position in which, to the eye of 
humanity, he stands. It is your business to admin- 
ister prisons; to punish crime firmly and system- 



A Sermon 393 

atically. It is ours to sec what has become of the 
family of the prisoner, and to see that the punish- 
ment you aim at him does not, in fact, fall upon 
their heads. It is your business, I think, so to 
punish him that he shall leave the prison a stronger, 
better man than he went in. It is ours to meet 
him at the door, and to take care that he is not 
led into new temptation. It is your business to 
receive within the protection of the arms of out 
mother, the State, every orphan child who is left 
friendless. It is ours to knock every morning at 
the door of your almshouses, and to take those 
children whom you have welcomed there, to the 
gentle adoption of separate Christian homes. 
Wherever the surges of life throw some light 
shallop hard against your unyielding pier, it is for 
us to drop in the fender, which shall keep any 
from being crushed or wounded. Statutes are 
necessarily made more severe than individual 
cases require, for you must provide for extreme 
cases. There are thousands of boys in our Com- 
monwealth who might under our general statute 
be sent as disobedient to your institution at West- 
borough. But it is our business so to watch each 
household that the necessary severity of the 
statute shall be defrauded, that not one of these 
shall be remanded there till it is certain that that 
is the only place for his cure. There is many an 
intemperate husband who might be legally sent 
to the House of Correction for his cruelty to his 
wife, and his neglect of his children. But you 



394 Sixty Years 

expect us, and you are right, to exhaust every 
appeal of domestic love and of Christian kindness 
in seeking to reclaim him, before we embarrass 
your crowded prisons with his care. Let your 
system press where it may, this is our privilege, as 
well as our duty. Your law may require that the 
pauper exile from Irish misery shall be returned 
to the Irish poorhouse whence he came. But we 
shall find, and shall be glad to find, a thousand 
ways for retaining him, and for letting the possible 
severities of your statute slumber. So the theory 
of your law may require that the fugitive from 
more severe oppression shall be returned at the 
summons of his master. But you will expect us, 
and not in vain, to arrest again the mechanism of 
the system, and to prepare, through the thousand 
channels of unseen benevolence, for receiving him 
with a Christian hospitality, and securing him a 
Christian home. For, in a word, such is the 
regular process of the reduction of severity in a 
Christian State. If the statute is too severe, as 
the code of England was half a century since, the 
community, acting under a higher law, calmly 
leaves it inoperative. And at last, the conserva- 
tive in government joins with the Mackintosh and 
the Romilly who have been at work for a genera- 
tion in striving to abate something from the 
bloodthirsty requisition of the latter. 

If I detain you a moment longer on this branch 
of my subject, it is because here is the line of 
public duty in which Protestant churches and 



A Sermon 39^ 

Protestant States seem weakest. Do not shut 
your eyes, gentlemen, to the fact that in some 
of the results of Christian social science, Europe 
is in advance of us in Massachusetts. Let us 
rather learn what we can, in our prosperity, from 
her experience of horrors. In especial, her lead- 
ing writers of every school now insist that where 
moral ends are to be attained, the efficient work 
of any charitable institution must be by voluntary 
effort. You can feed and clothe men by expend- 
ing money well; but when you have souls to save, 
you need willing souls to take the duty. The 
noblest institutions in the world, therefore, are 
those whose mechanism is well provided by the 
salaries and other payments by the State, while 
the volunteer action of Christian men and women 
comes in to give to the daily administration of the 
officers of government that multiform assistance 
which they are so glad to welcome. We have, 
indeed, proved this in Massachusetts. But in 
Europe they have carried it much farther than 
we, and to vast advantage. 

Any physician who hears me would tell us that 
the chief advantage which the great hospitals of 
continental Europe have over those of England 
and America, is in the thorough trained body 
of nurses, volunteers all of them, provided by the 
Sisters of Charity and other religious societies. 
While our boards of hospital trustees are at their 
wits' end to keep full their staffs of well-trained, 
conscientious, temperate women, the hospitals of 



396 Sixty Years 

Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe have 
the unpurchasable services of careful, tender 
women, who come in to serve day and night in 
the discharge of their highest duty to God. So 
in institutions for reform. I have the highest 
respect, from all that I know, for the force and 
character of our staff of officers at Westborough. 
Yet I know how difficult the trustees there have 
found it to marshal such a staff; and when I 
read the accounts of the volunteer services ren- 
dered in the reform schools of Hamburg and at 
Mettrai, in Europe, by religious societies of men 
and women, whose religious duty leads them to 
this work, — remembering our constant difficulties 
here, I wonder no longer that, on the whole, the 
best European institutions for juvenile criminals 
have succeeded, — and that, on the whole, ours 
in America are more costly, and more densely 
peopled every year. As a Protestant, I should 
be ashamed to say that the Roman Catholic 
Church can furnish volunteer assistance for the 
charge of those morally or physically diseased, 
in a measure which the Protestant churches can- 
not furnish. Yet if you asked, in any church in 
Boston, how many of the church members had 
ever visited the almshouse, the hospital, or the 
prison, with any motive but curiosity, the answer 
would be painfully small. 

Gentlemen, whenever your arrangements call 
for volunteer assistance, the Christian churches of 
the Commonwealth meet you more than half-way. 



A Sermon 397 

The iinbought service of the Boards of Trustees, 
which manage all your institutions, illustrates the 
force you can rely upon ; the services which no 
salary compensates, of many of your physicians 
and wardens, are illustrations. You may well go 
further in the same line. If you will go further, 
your duty will be better done, — and ours also. 
When you call on us for further service in those 
lines, you will be sure of the motive of the work 
you get. And we, as we render it, as we send to 
you those, who from the love of God and of Christ 
work among your imbeciles, your prisoners, or 
your poor, shall find the curse dispelled which 
rests of necessity on all those congregations which 
only cry " Lord ! Lord ! " and do not the things 
which He says. 

Your Excellency's administration^ has already 
won the popular reputation of special and new 
care for the varied home interests and institutions 
of Massachusetts. There is a peculiar satisfaction 
in making such plea as I have made, to an officer 
whose views and system in the management of 
our complicated charities, have been so sharp- 
sighted, far-sighted, deep-sighted, and humane. 
Your Honor, and you, gentlemen of the Coun- 

^ As Election Sermons are now unknown even in Massachusetts, 
I am tempted to recall the memory of a fine piece of Puritan 
ritual. The custom was of more than two centuries, that at the 
end of the sermon the preacher addressed personally, as I did 
here, the public officers, and they rose in their places to receive his 
words. E. E. H., 1899. 



398 Sixty Years 

cil, certainly need not fear that you have been 
called to any nominal or formal position, when 
your office is the hourly supervision of these 
broad ministries of the State, — yourselves the 
standing Commission to inspect them, and in- 
deed to govern them ; that she who giveth, may 
give with simplicity; — that they who rule may 
rule with diligence. And you, Mr. President and 
Senators, Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the House 
of Representatives, having made the sacrifice of 
two months of winter to the discharge of these 
duties which our mother demands on behalf of 
all her children, may well ask for God's blessings 
upon your effort, that its fruit may be real. I 
have said that to-day admitted you all into a 
Christian ministry. To many of you it is a day 
of ordination ; to all it is a day of consecration. 
May God guide you in such sacred duties ; and 
in the sense of His presence, as you appeal con- 
stantly to His will, may you find every day that 
Rock, unshaken and unchangeable, on which our 
Commonwealth is founded. 

God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ! 



A PERMANENT TRIBUNAL 

[The following passage is taken from a sermon which I 
preached in All Souls Church in Washington on the 3d of March. 
1SS9. We were right in considering that day a day of good omen, 
This sermon was printed as soon as I returned to Boston under 
the title of "The Nineteenth Century."] 

"This means that the nineteenth century appHes 
the word of the Prince of Peace to international 
life. 'No war nor battle sound ' was heard when 
he was born. And as he advances, the echoes of 
such sounds are farther and farther away. The 
wisdom of statesmen will devise the solution which 
soldiers and people will accept with thankfulness. 
The beginning will not be made at the end of war, 
but in time of peace. The suggestion will come 
from one of the Six Great Powers. It will be 
made by a nation which has no large permanent 
military establishment. That is to say, it will 
probably come from the United States. This 
nation, in the most friendly way, will propose to the 
other great powers to name each one jurist, of 
world-wide fame, who, with the other five, shall 
form a permanent Tribunal of the highest dignity. 
Everything will be clone to give to this Tribunal 
the honor and respect of the world. As an Inter- 
national Court, it will be organized without refer- 
ence to any especial case under discussion. Thus 
it will exist. Its members may prepare themselves 



400 Sixty Years 

as they choose for their great duty. Timidly at 
first, and with a certain curiosity, two nations will 
refer to it some international question, not of 
large importance, which has perplexed their nego- 
tiations. The Tribunal will hear counsel, and will 
decide. The decision will be the first in a series 
which will mark the great victory of the twentieth 
century. Its simplicity, its dignity, and its good 
sense will commend it to the world. Again it will 
be clear that those who look on always understand 
a game better than the players do. That first 
decision will be accepted. The next question may 
be of more importance, the next of even more; 
and thus, gradually, the habit will be formed of 
consulting this august Tribunal in all questions 
between States. More and more will men of 
honor and command feel that an appointment to 
serve on this Tribunal is the highest human dig- 
nity. Of such a Tribunal, the decisions, though 
no musket enforce them, will one day be received 
of course. It will be as to-day, in any two States 
of America, the great decisions are received of that 
great American Court, indeed Supreme, from 
whose methods the Great Tribunal of the New 
Century will have to study its procedure." 

On Christmas Day in the same year, I renewed 
this statement in an address in our church. When 
Mr, Blaine summoned the Pan-American Congress 
in 1890, I printed the following paper in Lend a 
Hand for December of that year. 



THE HIGH COURT OF AMERICA 

The meeting of the American Congress has no 
object so important as the establishment of a sys- 
tem of arbitration as to any questions which may 
arise between the different States of North and 
South America. 

What must be attempted is the establishment of 
a system. Discussion is not enough. Resolutions 
are not enough, nor any professions. It is pos- 
sible to establish a system, and a long period must 
pass before so favorable an opportunity can occur 
again. 

It is too much forgotten that an essential part of 
the prosperity and success of the United States as 
a nation is the system by which questions between 
the States are adjusted. Difficulties, indeed, are 
brought to an end almost as soon as they begin. 
Many a contest between neighboring and rival 
States has been adjusted by the Supreme Court, 
while most of the citizens of each State did not 
know that there was any question. Thus the 
Supreme Court adjusted a boundary question be- 
tween Massachusetts and Rhode Island, of more 
importance than many boundary questions which 

26 



40 2 Sixty Years 

have plunged Europe in war. And it would be 
fair to say that half the people of both States did 
not know that there had been any controversy. 

It is not enough for the Congress to vote that, 
in the future, questions of dispute shall be referred 
to courts of arbitration. When questions assume 
importance, after they have been neglected, and 
when they have had a chance to grow in conse- 
quence, it may be too late to constitute a proper 
court of arbitration. The demand of our time 
is that a permanent court of arbitration shall be 
appointed at once, and shall be in readiness to 
receive all such questions as soon as they arise. 
Indeed, it may be possible for such a court to give 
such counsel as shall solve the question at its very 
birth. 

The court should exist and hold its sessions 
from time to time, ready to receive inquiries and 
to solve doubts as to international law, and ready 
at any moment to hear an international question 
as soon as it arises. 

Such a court should consist of statesmen and 
jurists of the very highest rank, — men who have 
distinguished themselves before the world by their 
equity and wisdom in public affairs. Its establish- 
ment should be on such a scale of dignity, and the 
powers conferred on it should be so high, that even 
a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 
should feel honored by an appointment to serve on 



The High Court of America 403 

it, or such a statesman as John Ouuicy Adams, 
after he had left the Presidential chair. 

It should meet, quarterly, at least, for regular 
sessions, now at one of the cities of North Amer- 
ica, now at one of South America, as convenience 
might order. There is no reason, indeed, why it 
should not meet in Europe, or in one of the West 
India Islands. It would have permanent clerks, 
and reporters of its decisions. 

At first, probably, no questions would be re- 
ferred to it, except, perhaps a few trifles of form. 
But it should be required to publish from time 
to time opinions, in the line of " obiter dicta" its 
members devoting themselves exclusively to the 
study of international law and the study of such 
principles as shall bring in the reign of justice 
among men. 

The several States should have a right to sub- 
mit to it, in advance, questions as to public policy 
as governed by international law. And to such 
questions it should give immediate attention, and 
return short rescripts in the form of practical 
answers. 

Before such a tribunal, sooner or later, two 
States, in contest with each other, would bring the 
subject of their debate. The court would hear 
them by counsel, and would give its decision. To 
enforce that decision, it is perfectly true, it would 
not have a musket nor a ship. But the moral 
weight of its decision would be absolute. No 
State in America is so strong that it could stand 



404 'Sixty Years 

against it. The legislation of every State and its 
conduct would, sooner or later, comply with the 
court's decision. 

Take, for instance, the question now existing as 
the preservation of seals in the Northern waters- 
No nation concerned wishes to do wrong in the 
matter. No intelligent person wishes to see this 
race of animals annihilated. It is a subject emi- 
nently fit to be presented to such a court, that it 
may say what the laws of nations, or the eternal 
justice, would command in that affair. And Eng- 
land, Canada, or the United States would have to 
obey the decision. 

The manner of composing such a court is rather 
a matter of detail. Our experience in the Su- 
preme Court of the United States would suggest 
a tribunal of seven or nine jurists. They should 
be selected from the different nations, so that 
all parts of America might be represented, and 
authority might be given to appoint one or two 
" assessors " from the most distinguished jurists 
of Europe. The honors and emoluments of the 
court should be such that any man in the world 
might be proud and glad to hold a place on it. 

The appointments should be for good behavior, 
to cease at the age, say, of sixty-five or seventy 
years, with a handsome retiring pension. 

The judges might be appointed by such a Con- 
gress as now is in session, with a provision that 
their successors should be named in rotation by 



The High Court of America 405 

the several nations. It might be well that the 
name of a new candidate should be selected from 
a list drawn up by the other members of the 
tribunal. The judges should appoint their own 
secretaries and other officers. 

Their salaries should be paid from a common 
treasury established for the purpose. This treas- 
ury should be kept full by contributions assessed 
on the several States in proportion to their wealth 
or population. The expenses might mount to a 
quarter of a million dollars annually, or even half 
a million; but this is nothing for the object in 



view. 



It is difficult to estimate the value of such a tri- 
bunal, in its every-day duty of working on the 
international law of the world, and answering its 
demands. And so soon as one of the exigencies 
arise which create wars between nations, its worth 
would be more than can be told. 

We trust that the American Congress, represent- 
ing North and South America, will address itself 
squarely to some such practicable system, not con- 
tent with general statements, which are, after all, 
merely declamatory, of the folly and cost and hor- 
ror of war. 



A PERMANENT TRIBUNAL 

[Address given at the Mohonk Arbitration Conference, 
June, 1895.] 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — The 
words which the President has just used are a 
a good abridgtnent of my speech, — a Permanent 
Tribunal. The illustration which Mr. Abbott used 
this morning is perfect; it cannot be pressed too 
far, — the illustration of the United States of Amer- 
ica. The United States of America is the oldest, 
as it is the largest and most successful, peace so- 
ciety which the world has ever known. All these 
different societies of which Mr. Trueblood spoke 
this morning, however successful they have been, 
are utterly inferior to the remarkable association 
known as the " United States of America." Be- 
ginning with thirteen independent States, proud of 
their independency, having very strong grounds 
for alienation from each other, and including after- 
ward the acquisitions from Louisiana and from the 
Spanish territory, — acquisitions which mix the 
Latin race with the Teutonic race and bring in 
the Catholic religion to mix with the Protestant reli- 
gion ; in the face of all the difficulties which such 



A Permanent Tribunal 407 

a condition of things presents, you have the extra- 
ordinary spectacle of one hundred and six years 
of peace broken only by the calamity of the Civil 
War. That calamity may be considered sepa- 
rately, and if properly considered it is itself an 
argument, and a very strong argument, in the line 
which we are pursuing. Leaving that out, speak- 
ing of the hundred and one years of perfect peace 
which have been preserved, beginning with thir- 
teen different States and coming down to forty- 
four, you have the most remarkable history of 
peace in the world since the reign of the Anto- 
nines. And the great principles which are laid 
down by such writers as William Penn, and by 
Henry IV a hundred years earlier, whose " Great 
Design " for the same purpose is almost word for 
word the design of William Penn, — these princi- 
ples may be illustrated to the letter by anybody 
who chooses to study the history of the United 
States of America. 

It is perfectly true, as was said this morning, that 
this is done so peacefully that nothing gets into the 
histories. That is the general rule, for a history to 
leave out what is important, and to put in what 
is unimportant, if only to be noisy. It would be a 
matter of surprise in most schools, and perhaps in 
most colleges, if you should say to them that in 
one hundred and five years there have been thirty 
or forty conflicts between States in the American 
Union which, under any other circumstances, would 
have been adjusted by shock of arms. We had be- 



4o8 Sixty Years 

tween Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in the year 
1841,1 think, a boundary contest, of a difficulty quite 
equal to the boundary contest of which the news- 
papers are full now, between the Central American 
States. Here were two independent States, with 
an absolute difference. The question was sub- 
mitted to the Supreme Court of the United States ; 
it was settled by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, and I do not believe that at the present 
moment there are fifty men or women in the State 
of Massachusetts or in the State of Rhode Island 
who know what the question was, or would be pre- 
pared to give any intelligent account of a matter 
which, under any other system, would have brought 
the troops of these two States into collision. This 
is one illustration out of a great many. There was 
a similar question between the State of Missouri and 
the State of Iowa as to their boundary, — a ques- 
tion which perhaps made rather more mark upon 
national politics. There have been countless ques- 
tions with respect to the jurisdiction of States, but 
the Supreme Court does its work so quietly that it 
does not get into print. It is every now and then 
announced by European writers, with the most 
extraordinary fanfaronade, that there is such a 
court; it takes them entirely by surprise. Our 
English friends, when they travel here, call the 
President of the United States the "ruler" of the 
United States. He is not. The people of the 
United States is the ruler of the United States. 
We have had lately a very striking instance of the 



A Permanent Tribunal 409 

way in which the Supreme Court is virtually at 
the head of the government of America. 

Now why was not Henry IV right when he said 
there might be the United States of Europe? Why 
might there not be a permanent tribunal which 
could be called into session at any moment, and 
which could have the questions referred to it which 
are now referred to war? I was glad that that 
little conversation took place just now with regard 
to the word " arbitration." I think all of us who 
have come here have come supposing that the word 
is to be interpreted in the larger sense in which it 
comes into literature. There is a good New Eng- 
land phrase, " Leave it out to men." When a 
couple of farmers have got into a discussion as to 
whose ox gored whose cow, and they feel afraid of 
the lawyers, and do not want to go to the county 
town, they say, " I guess we '11 leave it out to men." 
So one names Mr. Jones, and the other names Mr. 
Black, and they two name Mr. White, and then 
the three hear the whole story, and they settle it. 
We have a home habit of calling that " arbitra- 
tion," and that is the scheme which has brought 
about seventy-seven arbitraments since the year 
1 8 1 5 , — and a very good scheme it is, if you must 
create a court for the immediate occasion. But 
the world, on the whole, in affairs of business, has 
got beyond the method of making a court for 
every separate occasion. It has found out, for 
many reasons, that it is better, instead of having 
Mr. Black and Mr. White and Mr. Jones engaged 



41 o Sixty Years 

for that particular occasion, to have some people 
used to deciding cases, — to have a court which, 
by the correctness and purity of its decisions, year 
in and out, gains the confidence of all the people 
engaged, — to have a court preordained, if one 
may say so, made long beforehand, without the 
possibility of the judges being selected with refer- 
ence to the particular matter which they are to 
decide. 

And so I want to urge, first, second, last, and 
always, a permanent tribunal. That is the thing 
which, if I may use the expression of the streets, 
must be " rubbed in " to the public mind. You 
really do not advance much on the present condi- 
tion of affairs until you can get the governments 
of the world to see that it is a great deal better 
to appoint one permanent tribunal, — I shall say 
those words a hundred times before I have sat 
down, for I wish that people may dream of it at 
night and think of it in the morning, — one per- 
manent tribunal to sit for a hundred years, than to 
have to make a new tribunal for each particular 
case. It is exactly as my young friend who went 
out on a bicycle ride this morning was glad he had 
the same bicycle he rode on yesterday, instead of 
being obliged to go and make a bicycle for him- 
self. He was glad to have a permanent bicycle, 
made by people who understood how to make 
them, and to use the same bicycle all through his 
travel. 

This was considered, in Henry IV's time, as 



A Permanent Tribunal 41 i 

somewhat visionary, though he came very near 
carrying the plan out. In the time of William 
Penn, a hundred years afterwards, it was still con- 
sidered a dream, an ideal. But a hundred years 
after William I'enn, comes along the United States 
of America, tries the great experiment, and it suc- 
ceeds; and seventy millions of people, in forty- 
four States, are now living under the success of 
that experiment. Nobody dares any longer say 
that it is dreamy or poetical or visionary, because 
it has succeeded better than the " dread arbitrament 
of war," better than the experiments of diplomacy. 
It has turned out that a permanent tribunal in the 
United States has wrought the success which no 
other experiment that has been tried has wrought. 
So we are, if I again may use the language of the 
ungodly, " on the inside track," and the burden 
of proof in this argument is on those people who 
want to make a separate court every time there is 
a quarrel. 

1 should like to go into the realm of imagination 
a little as to the future in this matter. You would 
appoint your court, and your court would exist. 
You would not say, " This court is appointed for 
the purpose of determining about the seals," or 
" about the indemnity which Nicaragua owes to 
Great Britain;" you w'ould say, "This court is 
appointed to exist as a permanent tribunal." I 
should say that a good plan to begin with would 
be for the six great powers to name each a jurist 
of the highest rank in jurisprudence, precisely as 



412 Sixty Years 

the President now appoints a jurist to the Supreme 
Bench of the United States. It should be the 
highest honor to be given in the service of each of 
those powers. This gentleman should be named 
to sit as long as his liealth permitted, or to retire, 
if he pleased, at a fixed age, with an honorable 
pension. The honorarium to be paid to him 
should be of the very highest; and the dignities 
of his position should be of the very noblest. 
This court of six persons, appointed by the six 
great powers, might then name six " assessors " 
with themselves, from the smaller powers of the 
world, so that they might have a court of twelve 
persons, not too large for consultation, and at the 
same time the susceptibilities of every one of the 
powers might be met by more frequent changes 
among the assessors, as I call them, than among 
the original six. I would have the vacancies in 
the six filled by the powers who originally ap- 
pointed them. 

This court would meet. It would be a great 
thing to have it meet ; after the world had been 
in existence six thousand years, or six hundred 
thousand, as you take it, to know that six men 
of conscience, religion, and integrity were sitting 
somewhere for the purpose of finding out the liv- 
ing truth on the practical questions which came 
before the world. This court would sit, first in 
London, then in Paris, then perhaps in Rio 
Janeiro, or Washington, then in Berlin. I do not 
say the whole twelve would meet, but a sufficient 



A Permanent Tribunal 413 

quorum would meet. I know very well that at 
first these States would be very slow about bring- 
ing their questions to the diplomatists. But there 
would come along some question, say as to 
whether the whole race of seals should be anni- 
hilated, — a question that nobody understood; and 
they would say, " Here is this ornamental court, 
let us leave it to them." The court will decide it ; 
it would decide wisely, and the public opinion of 
the world would confirm the opinion of that court. 
There would be no talk of resistance. This is 
precisely the point where the theorists find fault 
with any such statement. William Penn, as our 
friend said, was obliged to imagine an army be- 
hind. Has the presence of the United States 
army been needed to enforce the decision of the 
income tax? Was a file of soldiers necessary any- 
where to compel agreement in the decision that I 
speak of, between the State of Massachusetts and 
the State of Rhode Island, — did it require even a 
sergeant or a corporal? Not at all. It is just as 
when Colonel Scott aimed at the coon ; the coon 
said, " Don't waste your powder. Colonel, I '11 
come down." The coons of this world know 
when a decision has been made. There has not 
been necessary, in the whole course of the juris- 
diction of the United States, between State and 
State, the burning of one ounce of powder to en- 
force a decision which the Supreme Court made, 
so certain was it that public opinion would confirm 
its decisions. 



414 Sixty Years 

Now compare this with the decision made, even 
by as respectable a board of arbitration as that 
which met at Paris, which proved not to under- 
stand the subject at all, and which has decided it 
in such a manner that all the seals are being killed, 
and there may not be any left for another arbitra- 
ment. Under such circumstances you name peo- 
ple who are not used to sitting together as a court, 
you have a court about which it is very doubtful 
how it is to get its witnesses together, a court 
creating the law which they are to administer. In 
place of that, by a permanent tribunal, you are 
gradually forming a body of international law all 
the time. For the first time since the days of the 
Antonines, or perhaps since Adam and Eve, there 
is somebody to say what international law is, in- 
stead of its being left for professors of colleges to 
write about. There will grow up a body of law 
from the decisions of this permanent tribunal, and 
to the decisions of that court everybody will be 
disposed more and more to submit. There was 
growling about submission to the Alabama deci- 
sion ; there was growling about the murder of the 
seals ; but there has been an eager assent to every 
decision made by our Supreme Court. 

I will not go into further detail with regard to a 
proposal which I have confessed to be imaginary. 
I do think, however, after a discussion which has 
lasted nearly a hundred years, it is quite necessary 
that this country, if it means to make any proposal 
at all to the other nations of the world, should 



A Permanent Tribunal 415 

come forward with a practical and definite pro- 
posal. It is not enough to sing, — 

" No war nor battle sound 
Was heard the world around." 

This thing is not to be settled by singing. It is 
going to be settled by a hard-and-fast system, laid 
down in consequence of historical precedents, and 
in such a way that it may command the attention 
and respect of the practical people in the world. 
And with that remark, and a single illustration, I 
will not try to hold your attention any longer. 

It is to be observed that the passion for war is 
not a passion of the men who create the wealth of 
the world, or who are the really important people in 
the work of the world. Merchants never want to 
make war; the persons who pass from country to 
country never want to make war ; scholars never 
want to make war. War checks the real pro- 
gress of the world in invention, manufacture, trade ; 
and all these demands for war which Mr. Abbott 
alluded to this morning are superficial. The real 
workers and thinkers are always opposed to war. 
It is the loafers ; the people who wait for something 
to turn up; those who think they shall like to enlist 
in the armies; the people who are supposed to 
make public opinion, but who really follow public 
opinion, — who make wars popular at the beginning. 
And it is the steady dislike of people to being 
killed, and to having their brothers killed, to spend- 
ing money in taxes, to having their ships taken at 



4 1 6 Sixty Years 

sea, which always makes war unpopular when it 
comes to an end. We may be quite sure that, if 
we can propose a practical system which will com- 
mend itself to practical men, we shall go into any 
discussion of the subject with a good working 
force behind us. 



THE HIGH COURT OF NATIONS 

[A lecture delivered at the Mittleberger School, in Cleveland, 
before its Alumnae, February 12, 1S96.] 

People say squarely that the High Court of Na- 
tions is an impossibility. 

I know only too well that three-fourths of the 
audience whom I am addressing believe that what 
I am speaking of is a poet's fancy, as when Tenny- 
son sings : 

" The Parliament of Peace, the Federation of the World." 

I have simply to say then, in beginning, that 
there is a certain satisfaction in addressing an 
audience as kind as this is, when at bottom most 
of that audience believes that you are wrong. 

And then I have, before I come at my subject 
proper, to show from history that universal peace 
among civilized nations is not the absurdity which 
careless readers suppose. 

" You know, of course," people say, " that na- 
tions must fight with each other. Of course you 
know there always have been wars and there always 
must be wars. You know, of course, that the more 
civilized a nation is, of course, the more sure it is 

27 



41 8 Sixty Years 

to make war, you know." And irreverent people, 
of the kind who quote scripture to cover their own 
ignorance, and by citing the Saviour, remind us that 
the Prince of Peace said that he did not bring 
peace, but a sword. 

I begin, then, by asking such people to devote a 
few minutes, or better, a few months, to the study 
of three bits of history. The first is the history of 
the Roman Empire, including Europe, Northern 
Africa, and Western Asia, for a century and a half 
after Titus took Jerusalem. Speaking in general, 
the history of the second century of the Christian 
era is the history of profound peace among civil- 
ized men. It is this which makes Gibbon say that 
the reigns of the two Antonines make the happiest 
period of the world's history. From the Euphrates 
to the Atlantic, men of different races, customs, and 
religion lived in profound peace. "No war or bat- 
tle sound was heard the world around." And the 
consequences of this peace, to this hour, cannot be 
measured. Among other things, we are in this hall 
at this hour, because the world was at peace in 
that centur}^ I owe the coat which I wear, I owe 
this bit of linen paper to the pacific conquest of 
the West by the East in those centuries. When 
Julius Caesar was in Gaul, or when Paul first visited 
Spain, Spain and Gaul were such wastes of wooded 
mountains or swampy valleys as you might find in 
Central America or on the Amazon to-day, or 
where Blackfeet or Sioux Indians killed each other 
as lately as the days of Lewis and Clark. But 



The High Court of Nations 419 

after two centuries of peace, the quiet farmers in 
those valleys of Spain and Gaul ate the peaches 
which had been sent from Persia, and plucked her 
roses. They hackled the flax which came from 
Armenia, and their wives spun it and wove it. 
They did it as well, by the way, as any woman in the 
Western Reserve can do it to-day. These vic- 
tories were two or three of ten thousand victories 
which truth had been winning over error, by which 
light had dispelled darkness, as four or five genera- 
tions of peace had gone by. 

Read for a month the fascinating details of such 
victories won in a hundred and fifty years, and per- 
haps you will come here and say: 

" Of course, you know, you know, of course, that 
when people are at all civilized, }'0u know, of 
course, they do not make war against each other, 
but peace and permanent peace is perfectly pos- 
sible." 

Read, as illustrations of what I have said, a few 
passages from Gibbon : 

"The obedient provinces were united by laws 
and adorned by arts. They might occasionally 
suffer from the partial abuse of a delegated author- 
ity; but the general principle of government was 
wise, simple, and beneficent. They enjoyed the 
religion of their ancestors, while in civil honors and 
advantages they were exalted, by just degrees, to an 
equality with their conquerors. 

" Domestic peace and union were the natural con- 
sequences of [this] moderate and comprehensive 



420 Sixty Years 

policy. The obedience of the Roman world was 
uniform, voluntary, and permanent. The legions 
were destined to serve against the public enemy — 
and the civil magistrate seldom required the aid 
of military force. In this state of general security, 
the leisure as well as opulence, both of the prince 
and people, were devoted to improve and adorn the 
Roman Empire." 

" They united the most distant provinces by easy 
and familiar intercourse, and the communication 
by sea was no less free and open than by land. The 
productions of happier climates and the industry 
of more civilized nations were gradually introduced 
into Western Europe. Almost all the flowers, 
herbs, and fruits of our European gardens are of 
foreign extraction." ^ 

" The tranquil and prosperous state of the empire 
was warmly felt and honestly confessed everywhere. 
The true principles of social life, — laws, agricul- 
ture, and science, — first invented by the wisdom of 
Athens, now firmly established by the power of 
Rome, under whose auspicious influence the fierc- 
est barbarians were united by an equal government 
of a common language. The human race visibly 
multiplied, with the improvement of art. Men 
celebrate the increasing splendor of cities, — the 
beautiful face of the country cultivated and adorned 
like an immense garden, — and the long festival of 
peace, in which so many nations forgot their an- 

1 Flax, for instance, transplanted from Egypt to Gaul, artificial 
grasses and cattle with them. 



The High Court of Nations 421 

cient animosities, and were delivered from the 
apprehension of future danger." 

Again, I am speaking to excellent people who 
trust greatly in the authority of men of experience. 
These are the practical people ; they are the people 
who do not give themselves away to a sentiment 
unless that sentiment has been tested by great men 
or women who have succeeded, who have looked 
upon both sides of the canvas, who know when life 
fails and what progress is. 

Now to them, in full sympathy with them, I want 
to adduce the experience and the advice of Henri 
IV of France, the most successful sovereign of his 
time, not excepting Queen Elizabeth, whose re- 
markable success is also acknowledged. Here is 
Henri, the best fighter in Europe and the greatest 
administrator. And this man, he is neither poet 
nor dreamer, cheers the last years of his life by 
what he calls " The Great Design." The Great 
Design is a design for uniting all Europe in peace, 
with a permanent tribunal for the adjustment of its 
difficulties. He works out this Great Design in its 
nicer details. He does this so nicely that he con- 
verts to it the great Sully, his own prime minister, 
a man not accustomed to change his mind. Sully 
was inclined to pooh-pooh the Great Design, but 
Henri compelled him to attend to it, and you shall 
hear in a moment how. There were at that time 
sixteen nations in Europe. Russia did not yet 
count. Of the sixteen, they made fourteen rulers 
believe in the Great Design for universal peace, 



42 2 Sixty Years 

that it was sensible, practical, and could be carried 
through. Not to mention other names, they con- 
verted to it Elizabeth and Burleigh and Walsing- 
ham, who believed in it, and committed to it the 
power of England in Europe. Ah ! when that 
crazy Ravaillac stuck his dagger into the heart of 
the kindest of kings, that heart was at that moment 
beating in high hope for the practical pacification 
of Europe. 

No man then says that men of sense and ex- 
perience reject the hope of one permanent tribunal 
for the civilized nations who does not coolly blot 
out the names of Walsingham, of Burleigh, of 
Sully, and of Henri IV. 

I must not go into detail. The plan provided a 
permanent council, to be appointed by fifteen, or 
possibly sixteen, States, which made up all of 
Europe west of Russia and Turkey. It provided 
for a common army of 250,000 men to protect 
Europe against Asia and Africa, and a European 
fleet to protect commerce against pirates. 

But let me read one of Sully's notes on the Great 
Design : 

" I found myself confirmed in the opinion that 
the (Great Design) was, upon the whole, just in 
its intention, possible, and even practicable in all its 
parts and infinitely glorious in all its effects ; so 
that upon all occasions, I was the first to recall the 
king to his engagements, and sometimes to con- 
vince him by those very arguments which he had 
himself taught me." 



The High Court of Nations 423 

" Elizabeth, in 1601, was deeply engaged in the 
means by which it might be executed. A very 
great number of the articles, conditions, and dif- 
ferent dispositions is due to the Queen. They 
sufficiently show that in wisdom, penetration, and 
all other perfections of the mind, she was not in- 
ferior to any king, the most truly deserving of that 
title." 

" The death of the King of Spain was most for- 
tunate — but the Great Design received a violent 
shock by Elizabeth's death." 

But you are surprised that I hold back from the 
greatest examples of a permanent tribunal in his- 
tory. It is the example not of the Great Design ; 
nay ! not only of a great experiment — but of the 
great experiment which succeeded, succeeded bet- 
ter than those who tried it dared to dream. What 
was United Europe from Portugal to the Baltic, the 
Europe of Henri's Great Design, what was this 
compared with the continental nation made one out 
of many which stretches from ocean to ocean and 
takes in the pine-tree and the palm? The United 
States of America is the great Peace Society of 
history. And it owes its freedom from that 
wretched drain of its blood from standing armies 
which is the ruin of Europe, to one permanent tri- 
bunal, to a court which is indeed Supreme. Of 
course, I do not forget the Civil War, when for 
four cruel years this nation had to use the power 
of arms to suppress a rebellion. But even there I 



424 Sixty Years 

remember that it did use the power of arms, and 
that it so suppressed that rebelhon that it will 
never have to suppress another. And I remember 
also that that rebellion sprang from the timidity 
which in the beginning left outside one fatal ques- 
tion, with the proviso that it should not be sub- 
mitted to the Permanent Tribunal. 

We of the fourth generation are so entirely used 
to the even working of our Supreme Court that we 
are really unconscious of the dangers from which 
it saves us every day. That I might speak here 
to-night, I have crossed the dividing lines which 
separate three great States. The smallest of the 
three has a larger population than the kingdom of 
Saxony had when Saxony fought Frederic of Prus- 
sia to the death. These States have different laws 
and different histories. They have as many occa- 
sions for division as ever divided two Italian States 
or two German kingdoms. Yet for one hundred 
and seven years these States^ have lived together in 
absolute harmony. No criminal from one has 
found an asylum in another. No question of 
boundary has disturbed their frontier. In just 
such harmony are forty-five States living at this 
moment, in many cases unlike each other in 
religion, in history, even in the origin and race of 
their people'. And there is no lack of questions 
between them. Let me speak as a Massachusetts 
man. It is not sixty years since there came to an 
issue in my own State an open boundary question 
between us and the people of Rhode Island. It 



The High Court of Nations 425 

rested on old charters and old maps, older and 
more intricate than those which must determine 
the line between Venezuela and Guiana. The States 
of Europe have fought over such difficulties hun- 
dreds of times. Yet it is no disgrace to a Rhode 
Island man or a Massachusetts man if he do not 
know to-day that any such question ever existed. 
The governors of the States knew ; the sheriffs of 
counties knew; the tax collectors knew; I suppose 
some of the people who lived on the disputed ter- 
ritory knew. But most people neither knew nor 
cared! Why should they know? Why should 
they care? They knew there was a Supreme Tri- 
bunal whose business it was to determine all such 
questions. When the time came, that tribunal de- 
termined this question. Both States, of course, 
deferred. It never was a question again. 

Pray observe that we are talking not of Mr. Ten- 
nyson's Parliament of Peace. We are talking of a 
Supreme Tribunal. 

Parliaments talk. Tribunals decide. There are 
perhaps too many parliaments in the world now. 
This is certain, that there is too much talk. 

What the world needs is a Permanent Tribunal. 

And now I turn from old history to our present 
problem and our present duty. 

We have to show that this dream of an arbitra- 
tion and decision more solid than war, advances 
steadily towards fulfilment. It is now seventy-five 
years, — three-quarters of a century, — since the 



426 Sixty Years 

Congress of Vienna re-made the map of Europe. 
That was a step, due, if you please, to the provo- 
cation and exhaustion of every State of Europe. 
But it was a step forward. The military arma- 
ments of Europe have been, and are, excessive. 
But from that day to this there has been no such 
general war as devastated Europe for twenty-five 
years before the congress, or in the Thirty Years' 
War. In that time Russia has fought England and 
France; Austria has fought with Russia and with 
France, France has fought with Northern Ger- 
many. Italy has freed herself and united herself. 
But each of these conflicts has been short, and 
none of them has been general. On the whole, 
the century stands, like the centuries of the 
Antonines, as a century of peace. On the whole, 
invention and science, art and education, have 
made their way in the world. In more than fifty 
instances, since 181 5, have difficulties between 
States been settled by international arbitration, 
which, under the savage system, would have been 
left to war. In the recent wars, private war at sea 
has been abolished. There has been no commis- 
sion given to privateers. So much has been gained. 
And five years ago, at the end of twenty-five 
years, at the instance of our own government, 
another congress has been held this very year, of 
delegates from eighteen American nations. The 
population of those nations is not so large as the 
populations of Europe ruled by the sovereigns 
who were represented at Vienna, But the congress 



The High Court of Nations 427 

at Washington was the more important of the two, 
and so it will appear in history. In the sad irony 
by which some immediate question of profit and 
loss seems larger than an infinite principle, we 
watched the congress of the United States with 
more curiosity than the congress of United Amer- 
ica. The congress of Vienna was only a represen- 
tation of sov^ereigns. This was the first proper 
congress of nations. It represented peoples, and 
not merely their rulers. Nearly sixty gentlemen, 
of the highest intelligence and position, were ap- 
pointed by their several governments to sit in this 
Pan-American Congress. Almost all of them had 
been in diplomatic life, and had been students of 
international law. Many of them were men of 
letters, known as authors in their own lands. The 
nations of South America, of Central America, and 
of Mexico, were, generally speaking, colonized 
from Portugal or from Spain, and they use the 
Spanish or Portuguese language. But although, 
from pride of origin, the delegates generally pre- 
ferred to address the congress in Spanish, almost 
every man spoke English, easily and intelligently. 
This congress sat for several months in the city of 
Washington, after long excursions in which the 
delegates had observed the methods of industry 
and life in different parts of the United States. 
Most of the real work was done in committee 
rooms, and the debates, which are all printed in 
their own journals, were not published in the news- 
papers of the day. 



428 Sixty Years 

The result of their work is far more important 
than is generally supposed. They presented re- 
ports of the first value to merchants and manu- 
facturers as to methods of mutual communication. 
Thus they looked forward to improved postal and 
cable communication. They made the reports on 
which is based the new arrangement of reciprocity 
in tariffs. These are two or three illustrations 
only. What concerns us now is their careful and 
exhaustive report on arbitration and the methods 
of arbitration, in the event of any question arising 
between State and State of the great American 
Alliance. 

This subject was discussed with the greatest care 
by a committee of signal ability, representing men 
of large diplomatic experience. It is understood 
that the committee considered different plans for 
tribunals which might hear discussions of questions 
arising between American nations, and might 
decide such questions with authority. But they 
finally determined to report simply a plan, by 
which the nations are to bind themselves, in all 
events arising for discussion, to submit the open 
questions to arbitration on a uniform plan prepared 
by them. 

The plan contemplates no central armed force 
— such as Henri and Elizabeth's plan provided — 
to secure the obedience of the several States. It 
relies on the moral might of the arbitration alone. 
And it would not be vain to make such reliance. 
The other plans have many ways to compel 



The High Court of Nations 429 

obedience to a decision fairly made by such a 
court of arbitration. 

It cannot be said that this plan of a treaty pro- 
foundly stirred this nation or any nation. It is not 
the sort of thing about which partisan politicians 
occupy themselves. And they are responsible for 
most of the public utterances on statesmanship — 
in all these countries. But it is fair to say that the 
plan, though it does not go far, does meet the 
assent of thoughtful leaders of the community. 

Let us be grateful for a statement so definite. 
It is quite in advance of any statement made in 
international law by authority till now. It will 
mark the year 1890 in history. 

It is accompanied by a request of this august 
congress to powers of Europe that they will con- 
sider these conditions, in the hope that they will 
introduce them to European diplomacy. 

It prepares the way for the next step, which is 
not so far away. 

You have seen my purposes, as I dwelt even at 
length, on the arrangement, familiar to any Ameri- 
can citizen, of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. I did so, because we are now to see how 
simple will be the step which should appoint such 
a permanent tribunal, to sit as a High Court of 
Nations. 

Change the word " states " to the word " na- 
tions," and in the constitution of such a court as 
our Supreme Court we have all that we need to 
adjust the differences of all the nations of America. 



430 Sixty Years 

In the old days of 1785, of the old Confedera- 
tion after the Revolution, if two States differed as 
to boundary, as to justice, they had no court of 
appeal. They would have perhaps to go before 
Congress, or they would appoint — as these articles 
appoint — a temporary arbitrator. 

Since 1789 there has been a pcnnancjit trihinal 
of the highest dignity to hear any such questions 
between State and State to decide them, 

A Permanent Tribunal ! It has gained strength 
and authority by every decision. Its opinions are 
now cited with respect in all the jurisprudence of 
the world. 

You see at once how the work of such a court 
differs from the arbitration of a tribunal appointed 
for a special purpose. Such an arbitration has no 
authority borrowed from the past. The judges do 
not even know each other. They are appointed, 
one because he is a friend of one party, one the 
friend of the other; and on the umpire falls the 
decision. The decision once made, the tribunal is 
dispersed. It melts into thin air. It ceases to be. 

A Permanent Tribunal, on the other hand, acts 
with experience. Its members are consecrated for 
their lives to the study of just these international 
questions. They have no temptation to partisan- 
ship. On the other hand, the dignity and reputa- 
tion of every member, as of the whole court, 
requires calm and impartial justice, — in the least 
as in the largest considerations. 

As:ain : Before such a tribunal the affair to be 



The High Court of Nations 431 

decided would be brought at the first moment of 
controversy. It would not be left to grow in pro- 
portion, as passions were excited, as prejudices 
were created, as sparks were blown into a flame. 

Such a tribunal will be appointed from the most 
distinguished statesmen of the different nations. 
A seat in it will be the highest place of honor. 
Even such a man as Judge Marshall will be pro- 
moted from presiding over the Supreme Court of 
the United States, and will feel that it is promotion 
to sit as one of its members. 

The first students of international law might be 
summoned to fill places on such a bench, which 
has for its duty to study and to apply the whole 
science of the law of nations. 

Before the full court, or before smaller courts 
made from their members, would be brought great 
cases or small, arising between the nations. The 
court would have power to call witnesses and to 
take testimony. It would hear counsel, acting by 
a uniform and intelligent mode of procedure. 

At the first, the nations would be doubtful, and 
would bring before the court only lesser cases: 
"What is the real line in an old boundary?" 
" Was this tide-waiter right or wrong in such a 
controversy with a schooner's captain?" "May 
these poor seals live to be six months old, or shall 
they be massacred in babyhood ! " The Perma- 
nent Tribunal would administer such little questions 
so prudently that men would see in practice what 
it was good for. It would accept the Eternal 



432 Sixty Years 

Principles of Justice, about which there is never 
question. And on these principles its decisions 
would stand. Because right is right, they would 
be respected. And large questions, more difficult, 
what you call more important, would be submitted 
to it; until, in the end, nothing should be left for 
what we call the arbitraments of war. As if war 
decided any question of right. War only decides 
the question, " Which is the stronger?" 

Year by year would give new moral power to 
such a tribunal. Year by year would give more 
and more of the conquests of peace — to nations 
thus united. It is not too much to say that the 
glamour and poetry of war would gradually die out, 
— as the military class became smaller, — and as 
there was less need for men to train themselves for 
battle. The nations would look more curiously 
into a system so simple and so strong. They 
know to-day what is the difference between a Ger- 
man at work in Illinois and his brother on the old 
homestead in Prussia. The brother in America is 
no stronger than the brother in Europe. But the 
brother in Europe has to carry a soldier on his 
back as he ploughs and reaps. Men will not always 
wish to plough and to reap, to forge and to build, 
with that heavy condition. The dream of Sully 
and Henri and Elizabeth will appear again as a 
dream not quite impossible. The United Nations 
of America will then give the example for the 
United Nations of Christendom, and with their 
establishment of a Permanent Tribunal, the sword 



The High Court of Nations 433 

of Europe may be sheathed, to be used no more 
between kindred peoples. 

We may well remember at such a time that in 
America we are all statesmen and all rulers. Our 
language must not be borrowed from the turf or 
the gambling table. It is not he who can brag 
the most complacently, or keep the most steadfast 
countenance, who wins in these contests. Let the 
rulers of Europe, bred in a worse school than 
ours, lose their equanimity. We remember that 
the "gentleman is quiet." He knows his rights 
too well to be always preaching them. Before 
God and history, England and America have the 
privilege and pride that they are in the advance of 
civilization, of law, of government, and of religion. 
You and I and the rest are the princes of this 
nation. It becomes us to speak and act with the 
dignity, the simplicity, and the moderation of 
princes. 

It is excellent to have a giant's strength, but 
tyrannous to use it as a giant. 

Those of you who are to live through the first 
quarter of the twentieth century have this great 
opportunity. The second millennium shall draw 
to its end with the fulfilment in the affairs of 
Christendom of the promise of the beginning. 
And you, who make up the public opinion of this 
land of all lands, you lead in this victory, and are 
not as those who follow. You have the right to 
sing the hymns. You have a right to repeat the 
prophecies. You shall depart in peace, having 

28 



434 Sixty Years 

seen this great salvation. You shall know what 
you say when you recite the words, 

" Mercy and truth are met together, 
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other." 



A PERMANENT TRIBUNAL 

[Address at the Arbitration Conference at Lake Monhonk, June, 
1S96.] 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — I am 
sure we all feel how much the growth of pubHc 
spirit in the English-speaking countries has been 
led and helped by the great poet who wrote 
" Locksley Hall." To have had these words 
spoken as pieces, written in school-girls' albums, 
for sixty years, has been a great advantage to the 
public sentiment of our race. But we will remem- 
ber too that they were written sixty years ago, 
and that when the great practical man of our time 
speaks, what he asks for is a Supreme Court of 
the nations, and no longer a " Parliament of Man." 
As Judge Brewer said so well, quoting an epigram 
which was older than himself, " We have too 
many parliaments, and we do not have enough 
courts." What we are after here is not a Parlia- 
ment of Peace; it is a Supreme Court of the 
Nations ; it is a Permanent Tribunal. 

The analogy is so absolutely perfect between 
the condition of the world now and the condition 
of the thirteen States of America just a hundred 



436 Sixty Years 

years ago, that we cannot repeat it too often. The 
great victory of the United States Constitution is 
not in the estabhshment of the Federal Congress, 
not in the estabhshment of the executive ; it is in 
the estabhshment of a Supreme Court. Supreme 
above the President, — as he and his Secretary of 
the Treasury have found out within the last year; 
supreme above Congress, as Congress has found 
out a hundred times ; an absolutely supreme 
court before which all questions shall be heard. 
We are here to consider what are the things to be 
done in the establishment of a such a supreme 
court between England and the United States, and 
eventually between the nations of mankind. 

I was particularly interested, as Dr. Abbott read 
his well-condensed and vigorous questions, which 
he wants to hold us to, to observe that the rather 
vague word " arbitration," which figured here 
twelve months ago, does not occur in the five 
points submitted to us to-day. This is not an 
assembly simply to protest against war; to say in 
any vague, sentimental way that it would be a 
good thing if people would not quarrel, and if, 
when they do quarrel, they would leave it out to 
their neighbors. It is an assembly to bring about 
a Permanent Tribunal, to which the affairs of the 
nations shall be referred. In the little I shall say, 
I shall follow absolutely the analogy of the Con- 
stitution of the United States. 

When Mr. Jones and Mr. Thompson have a 
quarrel, and Mr. Jones selects Mr. White, and Mr. 



A Permanent Tribunal 437 

Thompson selects Mr. Black, they get together in 
the parlor of a tavern, and they ask Mr. Green to 
come in and be a third, and so it is " left out to 
men," as we say in our happy New England 
phrase. Then there comes up the question, What 
is the law by which it is to be administered ? And 
one says he will have it administered by the law of 
eternal justice as set down in the Book of Deute- 
ronomy ; and another says it shall be administered 
by the law of the State of Connecticut, and not by 
the law of eternal justice ; there is no code for the 
case. Then they want to get witnesses, and the 
men send over to South Goshen by the stage- 
driver, and ask him to ask the man if he will come. 
And the witness says he won't come, and that is 
the end of that. 

The founders of the American Constitution un- 
derstood this thing absolutely. They were going 
to establish a Supreme Court of the United States, 
and they have established it. I have lived through 
times when the State of Massachusetts did not love 
the Southern government of the United States 
very much, and when it blocked the wheels of that 
government in every way it knew how. It refused 
to fly the flag of the United States on the State 
House; it passed a law that no jail or other build- 
ing of the State of Massachusetts should receive 
any prisoners confined by the United States courts, 
that there might "not be any fugitive slaves put 
into one of our jails. What did the United States 
do? It said: "Pass what laws you choose. Our 



43^ Sixty Years 

marshal will get a room tight enough to lock up 
a fugitive slave." And their marshal did do it, 
and we could not help ourselves. That is to say, 
the Constitution of the United States foresaw the 
probability of the individual Mr. Black or Mr. 
White not proposing to agree to this arbitration ; 
and the Constitution of the United States estab- 
lished, not a court of arbitration, but a Supreme 
Court over the thirteen States of America. And 
that Supreme Court has been supreme from that 
hour to this hour, excepting in one miserable in- 
stance, due to the cowardice which left slavery 
outside of its jurisdiction, because of which we 
were involved in four years of civil war. 

This senator whom I have heard quoted says 
that no nation will willingly submit a question of 
boundary to the supreme court. All I know is 
that the thirteen States, which were nations at the 
moment, did submit their questions of boundary 
to the Supreme Court of the United States again 
and again and again ; — I think there are nearly 
forty instances where questions of boundary have 
been decided by the Supreme Court. I referred 
here a year ago to a question of boundary between 
Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which was de- 
cided by the Supreme Court; and I do not be- 
lieve that there are fifty persons in Massachusetts 
who know where those disputed boundaries were, 
which were thus decided sixty years ago. 

The very first question which was brought before 
the Supreme Court was a question whether a State 



A Permanent Tribunal 439 

might be sued in its own courts by one of its own 
citizens. The Supreme Court decided squarely 
that it might be so sued, and it was necessary to 
bring about an amendment to the Constitution, to 
prevent that action, which was thought at that time 
to be undesirable. But the States have, one after 
another, granted that privilege ; and even the 
United States, in the Court of Claims, is virtually 
sued by its own citizens. 

The President. — And also now in the judicial 
courts. 

Dr. Hale. — Such is the steady progress of 
the determination to do this. What we want is a 
tribunal which shall have the power to lay down 
its own methods of procedure. I do not care 
whether this tribunal is of four men or six or thir- 
teen. In my judgment it ought to be a body of 
students, informing us from time to time what in- 
ternational law is, and what it is not; what the 
authorities on international law have, on the whole, 
determined upon ; what the treaties of the world 
have established as international law. I believe, if 
you were to establish such a tribunal to-morrow, — 
and my friend on the left would of course be a 
member of it [Judge Edmunds], — it might be well 
employed for the next two, three, or five years in 
giving, from time to time, its dicta as to what the 
law of the world is on privateering, what the law of 
the world is on hospitality, what the law of 
the world is on a hundred points on which the 
writers of international law have written, and which 



440 Sixty Years 

may be said to be really decided. It would be the 
first business of such a court to state in general to 
the world what were the authorities which it looked 
upon with respect, and on what authorities it did 
not look with such favor. 

Then, one fine day, there would come along a 
quarrel. It might be a question like that very 
funny question as to what is the river St. Croix, or 
like our question in Massachusetts, what waters 
belonged to Charles River. Or the question might 
be whether the captain of an English schooner 
lying in the Bay of Gobblegobble, in the southern 
part of Africa, should or should not have slapped 
in the face the captain of an American schooner 
which had laths on board; — one of those highly 
important questions which have again and again 
brought on wars might be submitted to this inter- 
national court, because it was such a little question 
that the army and navy did not want to bother 
with it, and " them literary fellers " might have the 
joy of it. And the court would decide it. It 
would decide it wisely, — so wisely that it would 
command the respect of the world. And then 
might come along the question whether a whole 
race of inoffensive animals like the seals should be 
demolished or not ; or whether certain swamps and 
marshes and malarial beaches between one nation 
and another on the South American coast belonged 
to Nation A or to Nation B, or to nobody but the 
good God. The court might be left to settle such 
a question as that. Once give such a court dig- 



A Permanent Tribunal 441 

nity, once have it established, estabhshed so tliat 
by day and by night it should be in existence, so 
that no question shall arise too suddenly to be 
submitted to it, and there is no fear but that the 
civilized opinions of the world would come round 
to it. 

It should have power to state the general rules 
of its practice, and when and where it should 
meet; — I should suppose it would meet in differ- 
ent cities of the world from time to time. It 
should have power to call witnesses, to have its 
own marshals to get those witnesses into court. 
And the salaries and expenses should be provided 
by the most liberal gifts of the powers agreeing 
for this purpose. In these regards I am following 
absolutely the analogy of the Supreme Court of 
the United States. Compare all that with the 
working of these seventy arbitrations which have 
been described to us so well. You have a court of 
arbitration meeting in Geneva, and again in Paris. 
Each of them is a spectacle which angels regarded 
with pleasure. Each of them called together 
men of the greatest distinction, but men who had 
never seen each other before ; men who had to be 
introduced to each other and whose reputations 
were not known before ; men who had to deter- 
mine in what language they would speak to each 
other, who, when they got together, had not 
power to call a witness from the other side of the 
street; men who had to take up the case without 
any rule of procedure as to what testimony should 



442 Sixty Years 

be admitted and what should not be admitted. It 
is a court worse, if I dare to say so, than an eccle- 
siastical court, and when I have said that I have 
got pretty near the bottom of human nonsense. 
It is a miracle that in the great tribunal created at 
Geneva, and fading away like the mists of these 
mountains when its meeting was over, without any 
laws of procedure, without any standard as to what 
should be testimony, they were able to get any- 
thing on which people could rely in the least, on 
which this high tribunal made the decision which 
they did make. What we claim is that when you 
have a Permanent Tribunal, the rule which that 
tribunal adopts, and the reputation which it has, 
and the prestige which it gains in the world, will 
carry the decisions of that tribunal where the pro- 
ceedings of none of these courts of arbitration 
would ever pretend to go. 

The truth is that now you lose all that you have 
gained in each one of these arbitrations. You fall 
to the bottom of your mountain every time, and 
then climb up again and say, " We have climbed 
up to this place seventy-one times before. Is n't 
that encouraging? " 

The way to begin is to begin. It is not to talk 
about beginning. It is not to talk about the twen- 
tieth century; it is to act like the men of 1896, 
and begin to-day. 

Do not let us be deceived by the glamour which 
we can throw over the meeting at Washington, 
The meeting at Washington was presided over by 



A Permanent Tribunal 443 

our honored friend who does us the great favor to 
preside over us here. It called together four hun- 
dred men of the greatest distinction in the States 
to which they belong. It was well said that in 
the last hundred years no such list of names has 
been brought together in any great public move- 
ment as the list of four hundred names on the 
register of that convention. Trust me, if I have 
any knowledge of men or affairs, the meeting at 
Washington did not create a ripple on the surface 
of the average life of the city of Washington. We 
were not honored by any public expression of 
opinion by the President or any of his cabinet; 
not one of them darkened our doors for the quar- 
ter of a second. We were not honored by any 
public expression of opinion by the Senate or 
House of Representatives of the United States; I 
was not so fortunate as to see any member of 
either of those bodies within our doors. It hap- 
pened on the first day of the convention that the 
forefoot of one of the horses of the President's 
carriage got lodged in the track of the street rail- 
way. The horse fell down, and Mr. Cleveland 
opened the carriage door and stepped out on the 
sidewalk; and another carriage passed by, in which 
Mr. Cleveland was taken to his home. That inci- 
dent, of which I have now told you the whole, took 
up more of the attention, and twice as much space 
in the journals of the city of Washington as the 
proceedings of the great international arbitration 
conference on the same day. Do not let us de- 



444 Sixty Years 

ceive ourselves, then, by any glamour of what we 
ourselves could say and what our own reports 
could be, about our own convention. But at the 
same time let us observe that here was a conven- 
tion called, not by idealists, not by poets, not by 
" men of the twentieth century," but by the hard- 
headed men of the city of New York, who did not 
want any nonsense in this business. These hard- 
headed men had taken it into their heads that at 
the end of the nineteenth century it was not worth 
while for nations to be cutting each other's throats. 
That, I think, was the great lesson of the confer- 
ence at Washington. The thing we got out of the 
conference at Washington was that our president 
appointed a strong executive committee of twenty- 
five, which was a permanent committee, — a com- 
mittee which may be in session, if it chooses, from 
the first of January, early in the morning, to the 
thirty-first of December, late in the afternoon ; 
ready to prompt President Cleveland's somewhat 
lagging memory, to keep up Mr. Secretary Olney's 
tone of humanity, to be present everywhere where 
there is a chance to urge the necessity of a Perma- 
nent Tribunal among nations. That is what we 
have got out of the conference at Washington. 
Let us hope that that permanent committee is in 
session at this moment. 

I believe that I was assigned to say what I 
thought was practicable at the present time; I can 
say it in a very few minutes. When the Pan- 
American Congress met, — which was the great- 



A Permanent Tribunal 445 

est thing in the history of the last twenty-five 
years, and which two hundred years hence will be 
marked as such, — when those sixteen States met 
at Washington, under the masterly lead of Mr. 
Blaine, I had the honor to present to Mr. Blaine a 
plan for a Permanent Tribunal for the nations of 
America. Mr. Blaine was a statesman who would 
grasp any such idea, and he took the suggestion, 
which had undoubtedly been made to him by 
others, as one not in the least new to him, and he 
brought it before the private conference that 
assembled. The leading gentlemen of that as- 
sembly saw the importance of the matter, in par- 
ticular, the representatives from Mexico. But on 
considering what they could do and what they 
could not do, they satisfied themselves, as I remem- 
ber some gentlemen said here a year ago, that "it 
was not yet time" for a Permanent Tribunal, and 
therefore waited for a more convenient season, as 
a certain person waited in the Book of Acts, for 
whom it was not found that a more convenient sea- 
son ever came. Accordingly they did not propose 
a Permanent Tribunal, but proposed a treaty of 
arbitration. And I should like to have the gentle- 
men who roll the word " arbitration " under their 
tongues too eagerly, observe that nothing came 
from this proposal, and that not one of the sixteen 
States has ever adopted the form of the treaty 
which was brought forward. Whether it were 
the best thing to be done or not, it has not been 
done, from that moment to this. 



44^ Sixty Years 

I believe that at the present moment a proper 
overture by us to the Republic of Mexico, to the 
government of Brazil, and to the government of 
Chile, for the establishment of a permanent board 
to which could be referred all disputes arising be- 
tween these States, would be favorably received. 
I believe that if such a court, consisting of eight 
jurists, were to sit, — simply to sit, and be in ex- 
istence, the men being honored in each case as the 
men who receive the highest honor in the States 
appointing (such men as John Ouincy Adams was 
after he retired from the office of President, such 
men as Benjamin Harrison is to-day, are the sort 
of men you want to put upon such a tribunal), I 
believe that to such a tribunal every State in 
America would refer the questions which arise, 
which now at any moment may plunge it into 
war. 

My other practical plan is of the less conse- 
quence. It is understood that the President and 
Mr. Olney have one in view. It is understood 
that Lord Salisbury and, I think, the Archbishop 
of Canterbury have another in view. It is under- 
stood that the Bar Association has another in 
view. There are undoubtedly forty plans for per- 
manent tribunals between the United States and 
Great Britain. My plan is that when the Lord 
Chief-Justice of England arrives in America within 
the next month, the Chief-Justice of the United 
States shall ask him to lunch some day. And if, 
while they sat at lunch, the Chief-Justice said to 



A Permanent Tribunal 447 

the Lord Chief-Justice, " Don't you think this non- 
sense has gone on long enough? And could not 
you and I go into another room and block out on 
a bit of paper the few central principles for this 
thing?" I think the Lord Chief-Justice would say 
" Yes," and I think they would go into the library, 
and on a bit of paper the principles for the High 
Court of the future might be laid down then and 
there. 

I had the great pleasure, a year ago, of listening 
to Sir Frederick Pollock, who is now professor of 
jurisprudence at Oxford, and is a person of such 
importance in England that the English govern- 
ment gave to him the preparation of their Vene- 
zuelan case. When he addressed the graduates of 
the Dane Law School at Cambridge Sir Frederick 
said : 

" There is nothing I know of in our con- 
stitution to prevent the House of Lords, if it 
should think fit, from desiring the judges of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, by some 
indirect process, if not directly, and as a matter of 
personal favor, to communicate their collective or 
individual opinions on any question of general 
law; nor, I should apprehend, can there be any- 
thing in the constitution of that most honorable 
court or the office of its judges, to prevent them 
from acceding to such a request, if it could be 
done without prejudice to their regular duties. And 
if the thing could be done at all, I suppose it could 
be done reciprocally from this side, with no 



448 Sixty Years 

greater trouble. Such a proceeding could not, in 
any event, be common. Could the precedent be 
made once or twice, in an informal and semi- 
official manner, it might safely be left to posterity 
to devise the means for turning a laudable occa- 
sional usage into a custom clothed with adequate 
form. As for the difficulties, they are of the kind 
that can be made to look formidable by persons 
unwilling to move, and can be made to vanish by 
active good will. There is no reason why we 
should not live in hope of our system of judicial 
law being confirmed and exalted in a judgment 
seat more than national, in a tribunal more com- 
prehensive, more authoritative, and more august 
than any the world has yet known." 



THE MT. VERNON DINNER-PARTY 

[A speech before the American Peace Society, in Huntington 
Hall, May 13, 1S96.] 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — I 
wish to call to your attention the meeting of a few 
gentlemen, rather more than one hundred years 
ago, which in its outcome has a right to be re- 
garded as the first Peace Society of modern times. 
I do not forget the Great Design of Henri IV of 
France, Queen Elizabeth, and other leaders of their 
time, who proposed a permanent tribunal of peace 
and the pacification of Europe. But that demand 
of theirs had been permitted to go by, and it is on 
an occasion which you will think, perhaps, too 
small for consideration now, that the greatest 
peace society on the earth was born. 

I suppose it to have been, indeed, at the dinner- 
table of President Washington, — certainly it was 
under the hospitable shelter of Mount Vernon, 
that the greatest peace society in the world was 
born. It was in the year 1785, two years after 
what had been called peace had been arranged 
with England. Then it had proved that here were 
thirteen nations, jarring against each other, quar- 

29 



450 Sixty Years 

relHng at every point, fierce animosities existing 
on the right hand and on the left, and that there 
was no peace. A question with regard to some 
oysters in the Bay of Chesapeake is the beginning 
which has started a contest: the oystermen of 
Maryland and the oystermen of Virginia are in 
collision, and here are two sovereign States ready 
for war, in order each to defend the honor of the 
oyster, whether of Virginia or of Maryland. And 
it is under those circumstances that the great 
nation of Virginia on one side of the Chesapeake, 
and the great nation of Maryland on both sides, — 
it is on that occasion that they invited commission- 
ers to meet to settle the question of the oysters. 
And George Washington, who has lately laid down 
the sword, is one of these commissioners of arbi- 
tration ; and as his habit was, he asked these gen- 
tlemen to stay with him as his guests in the 
matchless hospitality of Mount Vernon. And, as 
I like to imagine, it is at a dinner party after the 
oysters on the shell have been served from the 
Virginia side, after Madam Washington's magnifi- 
cent puree de huitres has been served from the 
Maryland side, after the fried oysters, gathered 
perhaps from both shores, — it is then that the 
conversation, from the question of the oysters, 
works itself out, as it must do where sensible 
people have come together, and General Washing- 
ton, or one of these gentlemen, whose names I will 
not repeat, says, " But this is only one subject. 
We can settle this business of the oysters here 



The Mt. Vernon Dinner-party 451 

to-night ; but there are other contests between 
the States. There is the whole shad question from 
the Susquehanna above, which is going to sweep 
down upon us next spring; there is the ques- 
tion of lumber; there is the question of imports 
and exports on which every one of the thirteen 
States is at war with every other one. We must 
have some larger method of arranging the diffi- 
culties between us." And it is from such conver- 
sation, under the hospitable roof of Mount Vernon, 
that there is born the great Federal Convention of 
which Mr. Gladstone said that it struck out in the 
fewest months the greatest amount of wisdom 
which had ever been struck out by men brought 
together. 

What did the Federal Convention bring about? 
It brought, you say, the nation of the United 
States; and so it did. And how did it do it? By 
creating an army? No. Could it add anything 
to history? No. Were there any arrangements 
of detail which would " keep these people from 
cutting each other's throats a little loqger? " as one 
of them said.i You can scarcely say that. As the 
century has gone by, the great work of the Federal 
Convention, in stopping not only such petty at- 
tacks upon each other as that of the oystermen, 
but in preventing war, with one exception only in 
a century, — the great work of the Federal Con- 
vention was the establishment of the Supreme 
Court of the United States. A Permanent Tri- 

1 John Adams in a private letter to Dr. Price. 



452 Sixty Years 

bunal which should always be in session, day and 
night, which should have its marshals, its officers, 
and its established rules of procedure to determine 
any questions which might arise between these 
thirteen States, — the Supreme Court was called 
into existence. Supreme, remember ; it has shown 
itself a supreme court again and again, from that 
day to this day. It showed itself a supreme court 
only in this last summer when, over the head of 
the President and the Congress, the Supreme 
Court said : " No ; the income tax stops, and this 
money goes back to the men who have paid it." 
The Supreme Court is supreme over the executive, 
over Congress, over every one of the forty-five 
States which make up the American nation. You 
have thus a supreme court, a Permanent Tribunal, 
which can sit in judgment on a question of very 
small importance between individuals of any two 
States of the United States, and which can decide 
State questions as well, such as have again and 
again sent nations into war against each other. 

I would not attempt, on such an occasion as 
this, to go over even the names of the discussions, 
between sovereign States, remember, which this 
Supreme Court — because it is permanent, be- 
cause it is supreme — has adjudicated and settled. 
I am speaking to a great many Massachusetts 
men; I am speaking, I see, to many men and 
women of great intelligence ; but it would be no 
disgrace to any person in this room not to know 
that within fifty years there has been a question 



The Mt. Vernon Dinner-party 453 

between the State of Rhode Island and the State 
of Massachusetts such as has again and again sent 
German States to war against each other, such as 
has again and again sent kings of Italy to war. 
And here we do not so much as know the names 
of the places involved in the question between 
Rhode Island and Massachusetts ! It is rather an 
interesting question ; I looked it up in order that 
I might come to this meeting; I knew nobody else 
would do anything about it. And I think it might 
be as well to say what were the causes of war. 

In the beginning, Charles the First — who had 
just as much right in the business as I have to 
adjudicate between the boundaries of Patagonia 
and Chile — declared that the southern boundary 
of Massachusetts should run from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific on a line three miles south of the 
southernmost water of Charles River. In those 
early days you sent out your surveyor, and he 
went up in his canoe, and when he got above the 
canoe he worked up, though he had no rubber 
boots, till the brook got small, and finally he said, 
" This point is the southernmost point of Charles 
River," and he put up a stone there and ran a 
line east and west, and that line was accepted as 
the southern boundary of the State of Massachu- 
setts. Then a couple of hundred years go by, 
more or less, and at the end of a century or two 
some man who wants to make a better map dis- 
covers another brook which will go up far enough, 
if you go on a rainy day, to bring the head-waters 



454 Sixty Years 

two miles farther south than the head-waters in 
the original survey. Excellent question to fight 
about — which of these is the head-water which 
shall decide the southern line of the State of 
Massachusetts? Excellent question, — almost ex- 
actly like the question on which we are invited to 
fight with regard to the boundary of Venezuela at 
the present moment. And on that question Massa- 
chusetts and Rhode Island might have gone to 
war, — we did have constables arresting the wrong 
men because they did not pay their taxes to the 
right State. But the Supreme Court of the United 
States said, " We are supreme in this business. 
You may bring your maps." And they adjudi- 
cated the question, and the boundary is decided 
forever, and you and I do not know on which side 
it is decided. And this is because there is a Per- 
manent Tribunal, a supreme tribunal, which shall 
arrange the disputes among the States which make 
up the nation which is the United States. And 
that nation would not exist to-day unless such a 
supreme tribunal had been the master-stroke of 
the great policy of the men who made the Federal 
Constitution. 

My friends here are proud, and are rightly proud, 
that to-day they celebrate the sixty-eighth anni- 
versary of this Society, one of the oldest, perhaps 
the oldest peace society, so-called, in this world. 
But long before their time, as early as 1789, when 
the United States of America was founded, it be- 
came as the United-States-of-America, the greatest 



The Mt. Vernon Dinner-party 455 

peace society that the sun of God has ever shone 
upon. The United States of America is to-day a 
peace society ; that is what the name stands for. 
It is a peace society preserving peace, first among 
thirteen States, then among fifteen, then among 
twenty-four, and now at last among forty-five 
States between ocean and ocean. 

My Httle parable of the oysters has extended 
itself longer than I meant it should. But it is 
not very difficult to apply the lesson of the meet- 
ing under the roof of Mount Vernon to the lesson 
which ought to go forth from this place to-night, 
from all the places where people are brought to- 
gether who have to do with the government of 
this country. At the present moment we are in- 
terested, at any moment we ought to be interested, 
in the relations between England and America. 
Will you let me read to you a pregnant passage 
which I heard from the lips of its distinguished 
author last Jime, in the Sanders Theatre at Cam- 
bridge? Sir Frederick Pollock, the gentleman to 
whom, as the highest legal authority in England, 
the English government intrusted the make-up 
of its case in the Venezuelan matter, said in the 
great oration which he delivered on that day : 

"There is nothing I know of in our constitution tO' 
prevent the House of Lords, if it should think fit, from 
desiring the judges of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, by some indirect process, if not directly, and as a 
matter of personal favor, to communicate their collective 
or individual opinions on any question of general law ; 



456 Sixty Years 

nor, I should apprehend, can there be anything in the 
constitution of that most honorable court, or the office 
of its judges, to prevent them from acceding to such a 
request, if it could be done without prejudice to their 
regular duties. Such a proceeding could not, in any 
event, be common. It might happen twice or thrice 
in a generation, in a great and dubious case touching 
fundamental principles, like that of Dalton v. Angus, — 
a case in which some strong American opinions, if they 
could have been obtained, would have been specially 
valuable and instructive. 

" Could the precedent be made once or twice in an 
informal and semi-official manner, it might safely be left 
to posterity to devise the means of turning a laudable 
occasional usage into a custom clothed with adequate 
form. As for the difficulties, they are of the kind that 
can be made to look formidable by persons unwilling to 
move, and can be made to vanish by active good will. 
Objections on the score of distance and delay would be 
inconsiderable, not to say frivolous. From Westminster 
to Washington is for our mails and despatches hardly so 
much of a journey as it was a century ago from West- 
minster to an English judge on the Northern or Western 
circuit. Opinions from every supreme appellate court 
in every English-speaking jurisdiction might now be 
collected within the time that Lord Eldon commonly 
devoted to the preliminary consideration of an appeal 
from the Master of the Rolls." 

This is an opinion from the highest legal au- 
thority which England could name as to what is 
the present position of things between the nation 
of England and the nation of America. 



The Mt. Vernon Dinner-party 457 

I hope that some day one of our young histori- 
cal painters will make for us a picture of the 
dinner-table at Mount Vernon, of the half-dozen 
delegates assembled there, and the moment when 
the suggestion was made of the permanent tribu- 
nal which should make the greatest peace society 
in the world. If one may look into the future, a 
somewhat similar moment will be the moment 
when the Chief-Justice of the United States and 
the Lord High Chief-Justice of England shall 
meet together in a conference, — perhaps on the 
lives of the thirty thousand baby seals who are to 
starve to death within the next six months because 
their mothers have been slaughtered ; perhaps 
that matter will seem of sufficient importance to 
two nations for them to ask the heads of their 
judiciary to consider whether such famine and 
slaughter are creditable to the civilization of the 
one nation and of the other. But no matter what 
that first question maybe; perhaps it may be as 
to what are the head-waters of the River Otranto, 
whether they cross by the side of two palm-trees 
or by the side of three dragon-bayonet-trees ; 
whatever the question which may be referred to 
these two gentlemen, it might be that as they sit 
at lunch one of them should say to the other, 
" My good brother, we have become excellent 
friends in the course of this discussion ; surely we 
are not going home never to see each other again? 
Would it not be possible for us to propose an en- 
largement of this thing, and to make it permanent? 



458 Sixty Years 

If you could only have, sitting at your side here, 
one of your coadjutors and one of mine; if we 
could call in, — don't you remember that very 
bright Frenchman that you met in the arbitration 
business four years ago, — the man who spoke 
English so well? If we could have him there, 
and that fine Swiss, — and, don't you know, those 
ItaHan fellows are working out their whole busi- 
ness on philosophical lines, getting ahead of us, — 
you might have So-and-So?" If out of this dis- 
cussion about the seals or the head-waters of the 
Otranto there could grow up the Permanent Tri- 
bunal, of six, eight, ten, or thirteen judges, in 
session, with its officers, its marshals, with its right 
to command testimony, with its sifting over of 
evidence, and gradually with the prestige of the 
world attached to its decisions, — what a blessing 
that for this twentieth century of ours to boast 
over ! 

Mr. Tennyson has written no line which has 
been more often quoted and more widely remem- 
bered than that fine line with which " Locksley 
Hall" closes, where he expresses the hope for 

"The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World." 

But the world has already, in the generation and 
more which has passed since then, got beyond its 
need of parliaments of peace. We have only too 
many parliaments now, and too many speeches. 
What the world wants is a Tribunal of Peace, a 
Permanent Tribunal; and the world is sure to 



The Mt. Vernon Dinner-party 459 

have it. And all meetings to-day arc looking 
forward to this Permanent Tribunal, — to begin, 
if you please, between England and America ; to 
go farther, till the nations of Christendom are 
made one out of many, as the Lord Jesus prayed. 

" That day is coming," says Sir Frederick Pol- 
lock, " and every one of us can do something to 
hasten it ; of us, I say, not only as citizens, but as 
especially bound thereto by the history and tradi- 
tions of our profession, which belong to America 
no less than to England." 

That day is coming, and every one of us can do 
more or less to hasten it ! 



THE OLD DIPLOMACY, AND THE PER- 
MANENT TRIBUNAL 

[Printed by the American Peace Society, 1899.] 

Let us remember, as a foundation in all these dis- 
cussions, that what is called diplomacy is really as 
much out of date as is plate-armor or a mail shirt, 
or archery or hunting with falcons. For a person 
•who has eight days in the week nothing could be 
more entertaining than to study the origin of mod- 
ern diplomacy, its development, and its preserva- 
tion now among the other etiquettes of the past. 
It has done a certain duty in the past, as plate- 
armor did, and as falcons did. But now what is 
done is done outside of its forms and its etiquettes, 
and these forms and etiquettes are preserved 
simply for record, or, if you please, to place the 
final seal on transactions which are wrought out 
elsewhere. 

We still have ambassadors and ministers pleni- 
potentiary and chancelries and attaches. And so 
we still have plate-armor; there are two large fac- 
tories in Europe which are devoted to the making 
of plate-armor which is very good plate armor. 
The demand for it in the opera-houses is sufficient 



The Old Diplomacy 461 

to maintciin these institutions. And so we still 
have at the great cities ambassadors, who are very 
good fellows and do very good work. They prepare 
the way, in a fashion, and they keep excellent rec- 
ord of what is going on ; but the business of the 
world is not transacted by them. 

The world, indeed, since this century began, has 
been looking round, more or less uneasily, for better 
methods of achieving its purposes than the meth- 
ods employed, say by Philip II., Henri IV., and 
Queen Elizabeth. The gentleman or lady who is 
studying the history of diplomacy may connect 
with this study the progress which has been made 
in new devices. 

Of these devices the methods of what we call 
Arbitration are by far the most striking. They are 
so successful that we cannot but congratulate our- 
selves on their achievements. What is called arbi- 
tration amounts to this : two nations have come to 
issue on some point which concerns them both ; — 
a good instance is the arbitration of the northeast 
boundary question, between Maine on the one 
hand and New Brunswick and Canada on the other. 
The United States had its construction of the 
Treaty of Paris of 1783, as to the line of boundary 
to be run, which was to be on the highlands which 
separate the waters flowing into the Atlantic from 
the waters flowing into the River St. Lawrence. 
The English government had another construction 
of this same article of this same treaty. The ques- 
tion at issue was whether the St. John River did 



462 Sixty Years 

or did not " flow into the Atlantic." It discharges 
into the Bay of Fundy, which discharges into the 
Atlantic. Was it then a river flowing into the 
Atlantic, or 'was it not? The United States said 
that it was, the English government said it was not, 
and that therefore it must not be considered in 
drawing the line of highlands. 

The diplomatic system amounted to this, that the 
Secretary of State at Washington produced every 
reason in his power to show that in the minds of 
the seven men who made the Treaty of Paris there 
was but one thought: that they regarded all 
rivers which did not flow into the St. Lawrence as 
flowing into the Atlantic. If they made no mention 
of the St. John, — and they did not, — it was simply 
because it seemed to them so clear that the name 
of the bay which received its waters was of no 
consequence, that they classed it with all the other 
rivers on the south side of the boundary line. 
Against this the English government presented all 
their reasons for considering that the line should 
run south of the St. John, and that its waters should 
be treated as if they did not exist. 

On an issue like this, diplomatists could spend 
hundreds of years if they wanted to. There have 
been such questions which have been open for that 
length of time. The United- States government 
and the English government, after a diplomatic dis- 
cussion of fifty years, determined to leave the 
question to the arbitration of the King of the 
Netherlands. This does not mean that the King 



The Old Diplomacy 463 

personally considered the subject; it means that 
he selected competent and impartial students who 
should consider it, and who should report to him. 
The King of the Netherlands was a respectable 
person, who had no special prejudices in favor of 
either power. He accepted the proposal, and he 
made a report. His report was that neither of the 
two parties had maintained its claim, and that he 
would make a new line, between the two, not 
pretending that it was the line of the treaty, but 
pretending that it was a good line which they had 
better both establish. 

Each party refused to be bound by the arbitra- 
tion. They said he had not done what he was 
appointed to do ; and the whole matter was left 
for further negotiation. 

When, in the year 1842, Sir Robert Peel came 
into power in England, he determined to settle the 
question. He sent over to America Lord Ash- 
burton, a gentleman who, as one of the Barings, 
had very large financial relations with America, and 
was well known and esteemed here. On our side, 
Mr. Webster was then at the head of the Depart- 
ment of State. Lord Ashburton and Mr. Webster 
met; Mr. Webster brought together experts from 
Massachusetts and Maine, and so gathered a staff 
of seven people around him. He was the eighth, 
Lord Ashburton was the ninth, and they agreed 
together, as a body of men of sense, that they 
would abandon the old treaty of 1783, and make a 
new line. They made a Hne, and that line is now 



464 Sixty Years 

the line between the two countries. This was no 
triumph of diplomacy ; it was a frank rejection of 
the old methods of diplomacy. And such a trans- 
action is one of the movements of this century 
which show that old-fashioned diplomacy cannot 
be trusted in such affairs, and that you have to de- 
vise some method, as Sir Robert Peel did, more in 
consonance with what we may call the business 
habits of the time. 

The intercourse of nations is so much larger than 
it was in the times of Queen Elizabeth, and the 
personal relations of individuals so much closer, 
that there is something absurd in the diplomatic 
pretence. It is absurd to pretend that any gentle- 
man, however well informed, who represents the 
Queen of England, meeting with any gentleman, 
however well informed, who represents the Presi- 
dent of the United States, can even begin to 
express or to carry into effect such arrangements 
as are necessary in the mutual intercourse or in the 
commerce between the nations called England and 
the United States. A very pathetic illustration of 
the failure of any reliance upon such agents was 
in the famous Jay Treaty of the end of the last 
century. Jay was a man as well informed as most 
Americans of his time. The English government, 
of course, took counsel which they thought good. 
But they made a treaty of commerce which made 
no reference to the fact that cotton was raised in 
the United States. Nobody connected with the 
treaty on either side knew that it was raised in the 



The Old Diplomacy 465 

United States. And that treaty had to meet a 
terrible storm of indignation in America. The men 
of affairs, who did know that there had come in 
this new-born stranger who was to be a giant in the 
Hne of international commerce, were able to twit 
the diplomatists who had made that treaty with 
their ignorance of a factor so important. 

It may readily enough be said, however, that 
the real business of diplomatists is not to open 
new channels of intercourse, but that it is to 
smooth the intercourse which exists and remove 
causes of complaint. Should there turn up ground 
of quarrel between the two nations, is it not well 
that there should be, at the capital of each, a rep- 
resentative of the other, who may make or obtain 
the necessary explanations? In theory this sounds 
very well. But what happens in practice? 

Suppose in Delagoa Bay an American schooner 
is unloading lumber. Suppose a midshipman from 
one of the Queen's ships comes on board on some 
errand or other, and he and the American skipper 
get into a quarrel. Perhaps the midshipman has 
to be ejected forcibly ; perhaps not. But each of 
them is very angry, — perhaps each of them is a 
little drunk, — and each swears revenge. So soon 
as the schooner returns to America, her captain 
reports what he calls the facts at his headquarters. 
Before that time a report has gone to England of 
the insult given to an English officer. Here is 
ample ground for war, on the old theories of war. 
Jenkins's ear is not more important than the slap 

30 



466 Sixty Years 

in the face which one of these two men may or 
may not have given the other. What possible 
chance is there of obtaining the truth in the dip- 
lomatic contest which is to follow? The American 
skipper and one or two of his crew are examined 
at Washington, and they tell the story in their own 
way and with their own color. Nobody cross- 
examines them, the offending parties have no 
opportunity to hear them; but careful statements 
of their evidence are laid before the proper officials 
in our State Department. They issue the proper 
instructions to the United States minister in Eng- 
land, and he, by virtue of his office, is bound to 
take our side. He does take it, takes it through 
and through. 

Exactly the same thing is gone through on the 
other side. Each government educates a set of 
men who understand about the Delagoa incident. 
These men persuade themselves of the absolute 
right of their own view. You could carry on dis- 
cussion, on such a basis, for a hundred years, and 
come to no settlement. Neither party has any 
power to cross-examine witnesses. The cases are 
confessedly made up on ex-parte testimony, and 
have to run the chances of such cx-parte testimony 
in the decision which must be arrived at. 

This Delagoa case is pure imagination. I do 
not know that we ever send lumber to Delagoa 
Bay. But anybody who will read the long and 
rather dreary discussions of the Venezuela case 
will see how great is the danger of pure ex-parte 



The Old Diplomacy 467 

opinion. It has been whispered that Lord Salis- 
bury himself, when at last he was obliged to give 
his personal attention to the details of this contro- 
versy, was surprised to find what was the class of 
errors into which the advocates of England's claim 
in the English Foreign Office has been led by the 
documents which they had on their files. 

Now there were more than seventy-five impor- 
tant arbitrations in the seventy-five years which 
followed the Treaty of Ghent. Here was an im- 
mense step forward in international relations. Our 
own country took advantage of arbitration in the 
well-known instance of the northwestern boundary, 
when we accepted the adverse decision of the 
Emperor of Germany; of the Alabama claims, 
when England accepted the adverse decision, and 
subsequently in the Alaskan contention. But 
while we acknowledge all that was thus gained, 
one cannot but remember how much dissatisfaction 
these awards gave, and one cannot but ask how 
much was to be expected from such tribunals. 

For the purpose of these arbitrations, seventy- 
five distinct tribunals, more or less, were estab- 
lished; and these tribunals ceased to be tribunals 
as soon as the award was made. There was there- 
fore in no case any prestige, in the court making 
the decision, gained by its earlier successes; nor 
indeed were the persons who constituted such 
tribunals in the least prepared by previous expe- 
rience in the same line. They were all novices. 
Worse than this, in no case had they any power 



468 Sixty Years 

to call witnesses, excepting so far as the courtesy 
of the different States suggested. When the King 
of the Netherlands had referred to him the north- 
east boundary question which has been alluded to, 
the English government had and knew it had in its 
possession, in the King's own library, a map on 
which the A Mericc7f I line was drawn distinctly, with 
the manuscript statement, " This is the line agreed 
upon by the Commission." The English govern- 
ment did not consider that it was their duty to 
bring this map before the King of the Netherlands, 
and he never knew that it existed. Many years 
after Mr, Sparks discovered in France the cele- 
brated " red line map," which favored the BritisJi 
claim, though it had no manuscript statement, and 
no one knew what was its origin. He gave the 
American government the knowledge of this fact, 
and they did not consider it their business to 
apprise Lord Ashburton of its existence. Every 
arbitration has been obliged to act with the con- 
sciousness that each party was putting its best 
foot foremost, and no one of them has had any 
power to call for witnesses as to the existence of 
another foot, or to cross-examine witnesses. The 
great arbitration of the Alabama claims was 
decided by a court which had only the testimony 
which the two countries brought before it, and 
which had to judge for itself of the value of that 
testimony. 

Such are the reasons for saying that as the cen- 
tury has worked along, the progress of man has 



The Old Diplomacy 469 

proved the necessity of a Permanent Tribunal 
between States, which should be in session all the 
time. It should be entrusted, first, with power to 
lay down certain fundamental principles of inter- 
national law. This is not impossible, nor even 
difficult, for the study of the theory of international 
law has gone on, not interrupted by diplomatists, 
who have not had much to do with it, but asserting 
itself more and more in the affairs of commerce 
and nations. 

Second, this Tribunal, permanently established, 
must have power to call for witnesses, wherever 
they maybe, and to authenticate written statements 
wherever they may be made. 

Third, it must have power to establish its own 
rules of procedure, and it must fix reasonable times 
for the hearing and adjudication of questions 
brought before it. 

Fourth, these questions must be international 
questions. The court is not established to define 
the rights of individuals, or to decide in their con- 
troversies. It is established simply to give to one 
nation an opportunity to prove a case in a conten- 
tion with another nation. 

Fifth, this court need not define, nor need any- 
body define, what class of questions the nations 
shall thus bring forward. Come who will ! The 
court exists, and it exists to promote international 
justice. As was well said by a member of the New 
York State Bar Association, it hangs out its sign, 
" International Justice Administered Here." 



470 Sixty Years 

Sixth, having hung out its sign, this court hears 
all international cases brought before it. It hears 
counsel on each side, and examines the testimony 
which they bring forward. If necessary, it calls 
for more testimony. If necessary, it refers ques- 
tions to masters and it demands reports on side 
issues from experts. Having thus informed itself, 
this court pronounces its decision. 

Now when that decision has been made, in such 
a way, no power can stand against it. New ques- 
tions may be brought up ; but that question, in 
the minds of men and in the public opinion of the 
world, will be considered as decided. The ques- 
tion need not be asked what army or what fleet 
shall enforce these decisions. 

In saying all this, one is simply following the 
great analogy of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. There are forty-five States which submit 
all their interstate questions to the decision of the 
Supreme Court. Every year the Supreme Court 
decides such questions. It has decided such ques- 
tions for a hundred years. Unfortunately, the 
Constitution itself waived the right of considering 
the question of slavery among those questions. 
But with the exception of this question, thus taken 
away from the decision of the Supreme Court, it 
has made no decision which has not on the instant 
been silently obeyed. Vox populi, vox Dei ; and 
the will of the people of America expresses itself 
in the decision of the Supreme Court. 

It should be remembered that the great treaty 



The Old Diplomacy 471 

which has distinguished the names of Lord Salis- 
bury and Mr. Ohiey failed simply on questions of 
detail respecting the cases which might and might 
not be brought before the tribunal which they 
established. The treaty expressed this in these 
words : 

ARTICLE IV 

All pecuniary claims or groups of pecuniary claims 
which shall exceed ;!{^ioo,ooo in amount, and all other 
matters in difference, in respect of which either of the 
high contracting parties shall have rights against the 
other under treaty or otherwise, provided that such mat- 
ters in difference do not involve the determination of 
territorial claims, shall be dealt with and decided by an 
arbitral tribunal constituted as provided in the next fol- 
lowing article. 

But it appeared at once that such a treaty was 
binding the hands of the men of the future. The 
men of the future will not like to have their hands 
bound, and will be very apt to protest against de- 
cisions made in advance, as to what is a " question 
of honor," for instance. It was therefore the great 
advantage of the other plan, — that presented by 
the New York State Bar Association, — that it 
prescribed no restriction on the questions which 
might be brought, if both parties agreed. It did 
not compel them to bring their cases to the inter- 
national tribunal, any more than a man is com- 
pelled to bring an action against another man. If 
he prefers to let the matter grind along without 



472 Sixty Years 

trial, he can do so. This open permission to the 
nations to use the new tribunal is probably nec- 
essary in inducing them to agree to establish it. 

The different plans which have been suggested 
for the personnel of such a tribunal are interesting, 
but they are not fundamentally important. The 
important thing is that the personnel shall be such 
as to command the respect and confidence of the 
world from the beginning. If the United States 
of America commissioned its two most distin- 
guished jurists to such a court, if England did the 
same, and France the same, there would be a be- 
ginning. Let these six gentlemen meet, and let 
them determine on three men well known in the 
world as students of international law, whom they 
will add to their number. Here you would have a 
tribunal of nine, well fitted for the beginning of 
this great enterprise. It would be well, perhaps, 
if it were determined to add to this tribunal six 
assessors, not of the same rank as the nine judges, 
but such as could represent the smaller States of 
Europe and America, and such as could be relied 
upon, perhaps in holding local inquiries in regions 
where such inquiries have to be made. If such a 
court existed, if only the questions between these 
three nations, England, France, and America, were 
submitted to it, its decisions would at once attract 
attention and would command the respect of the 
world. At some fortunate moment, Germany 
would ask to be received into the circle of its oper- 
ations. Russia would have the same wish, Aus- 



The Old Diplomacy 473 

tria would not be left out, and probably the 
smaller States would be more eager than the six 
great powers to join in so simple an arrangement 
for deciding questions of fact and law, such as 
make the difificulties between nations. 

The court would be established, then, and it 
would exist. If established on a provision of suf- 
ficient dignity, it would so exist that nations would 
be glad to bring many cases under its decision. 
It will study such cases, and will make its decision. 
Such a tribunal as we propose would command 
respect for these decisions, however slight the sub- 
jects which were involved. The question, not in 
itself important, whether the interesting race of 
seals shall exist or shall not exist in 1950, would 
be brought before it. Some wretched question of 
boundary between Costa Rica and Nicaragua 
would be brought before it; — whether the St. 
Matthew River were ever called the St. Mark, or 
whether that river exists at all ; — some of the 
Venezuelan questions \vere as trivial as this. With 
every new decision the new tribunal would gain 
prestige and authority, and thus any two nations 
which had cause for controversy, instead of having 
to create a new court, out of new cloth, with inex- 
perienced judges and with no traditional forms of 
procedure, would come before the International 
Tribunal, knowing what testimony it was to bring, 
how it was to authenticate its claims, and sure of 
an impartial hearing of its arguments. 



THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA AND HIS 
CIRCULAR 

I^A sermon preached at All Souls' Church in New York, 1899.] 
" On earth peace, good will toward men." — Luke ii. 14. 

The song of the angels is taken fairly to express 
the hope and aim of the Church of Christ. He 
has no title more tender and true than that of " the 
Prince of Peace," though he himself said so sadly, 
" Think not that I have come to bring peace, but 
a sword," though his triumph was to be won when 
the blood flowed from his side, drawn by the spear 
of a Roman soldier. 

In our great festivals, as on Christmas morning 
or on Easter Day, if we dare, we are glad to sing 
Milton's hymn. 

" Nor war or battle sound 
Was heard the world around. 
No hostile chiefs to mutual conflict ran." 

And our prayer to God is always that the sword 
may be sheathed, and men need study war no 
more. 

But, in face of this hope, — yes, and prophecy, — 
we have to own that even in Christendom the gen- 



The Peace Circular 475 

eral belief and practice is the other way. Men 
will laugh in your face when you say, " The lion 
shall lie down with the lamb." They will repeat 
the old jest that the lamb will be inside the lion. 
They will sneer at talk of universal peace, as being 
only the dream of poets and of prophets. " The 
men who swing on rainbows," they say, " the son- 
neteers, the sweet singers, — they are the men who 
prattle about lambs and kids and doves, and swords 
beaten into ploughshares." And this sneer of the 
" men of practice," as they love to call themselves, 
goes so far that in average talk you find the recur- 
rence of war spoken of as a regular necessity. As 
in our Spartan times, the mothers of our Israel 
assembled their families in springtime, and gave to 
each member a dose of nauseous medicine, — to 
the weak that they might be made strong, to the 
strong that they might not be sick, — you are 
coolly told that once in a generation there must 
be a drawing of blood. It is like Dr. Sangrado in 
the novel. What people called in old times the 
" bad humors " must be drawn off, and this means 
bloodshed. You hear this in the pulpit. You 
hear it in common talk. It works its way into 
senates and councils. 

Within a month, in a large assembly in a uni- 
versity of years of honest fame, a professor said to 
me, confidently, " Why is it that every century is 
more warlike than any before?" And I had to 
answer, " Because it is not so." I had to remind 
him that the people of the United States had had 



476 Sixty Years 

scarcely eight years of war in this nineteenth cen- 
tury, against thirty-four or five in the century 
before. In the same two centuries, England's con- 
trast, in general European wars, is fourteen years 
of war, with Napoleon and afterwards with Russia, 
against nearly fifty years in the century before. 
In face of figures so distinct as these, that easy 
phrase that men make war more than ever finds 
way in conversation and even afi"ects public policy 
and education. 

But, in truth, all the time the civilization of the 
world advances, commerce advances, education 
advances, the Christian religion advances. And 
commerce, education, civilization, and Christianity 
mean peace. Prophecy is more and more intelli- 
gible with every year; and prophets know — be- 
cause prophets are poets if you please — that all 
their prophecies of the twentieth century will fail 
if it is not a century of peace. 

Of a sudden the time comes, and the clock 
strikes. " The present moment would be a favor- 
able time to find the means for insuring durable 
peace to all people." 

"To all people." "Durable peace." "The 
present moment." Whose are these words? Is 
this some dreamy poet swinging on a rainbow? 
Is this some coward lover wanting to play with 
Neaera's hair? It is the leader of the largest army 
in the world. " Let us have peace," as the great 
soldier of America said. It is the sovereign of the 
largest territorial dominion in the world. It is the 



The Peace Circular 477 

Czar of Russia, " The present moment," he says. 
What is the present moment? It is the moment 
when that nation which best represents modern 
life has crushed by a single blow the only State 
which was left to represent bigotry and tyranny and 
savagery. America has crushed Spain, and is 
arranging the terms of permanent peace between 
the new and the old. The miserable blunder of 
King James the Fool, of England, after Elizabeth 
had crushed the Spanish Armada, has been atoned 
for, and that business has been finished. The new 
has asserted itself, and feudalism is at an end. 
To-day has spoken, and yesterday is nowhere. 

This moment, then, is the moment to insure 
durable peace, — " the present moment." 

The czar's proclamation is carelessly spoken of as 
simply a proposal for disarmament. It is criticised 
with sneers, abuse, ridicule, or indifference, mostly 
by people who have taken the precaution not to 
read it. In truth, however, it begins : " The pre- 
servation of universal peace and the reduction of 
armaments make the ideal to which all govern- 
ments should direct their efforts." It ends with a 
prayer that these efforts may be united in one 
focus. That is the striking figure of the appeal 
which the czar makes for a formal consecration of 
the principles of right, on which rest the security 
of government and the progress of the peoples. 

The czar takes pains to show that now for twenty 
years every important treaty has affected to seek 
this object, — *' general pacification," or, in a more 



478 Sixty Years 

literal rendering, " the peace-loving tendencies." 
He now proposes a conference of all the powers 
of the civilized world, great and small, to occupy 
itself with this object so generally desired. I am 
not sure but I should best advance my purpose 
now if I took your time in reading the whole of 
his appeal, I will read the beginning and the end. 
It begins with these words, of which I have already 
cited some : — 

" The preservation of general peace and the pos- 
sible reduction of the excessive armaments now 
pressing upon all nations make the ideal towards 
which the endeavors of all government should be 
directed. 

" His Majesty, the Emperor, my august master, 
has been won over to this view, 

" Convinced that this lofty aim accords with the 
essential interests and legitimate views of all the 
powers, the Imperial Government believes the pres- 
ent moment to be the favorable time to seek 
by an international council the most practicable 
means of insuring real and durable peace to all 
peoples; and, above all, of limiting the ever- 
increasing development of the present armaments." 

And it ends thus: "Filled with this idea, his 
Majesty has been pleased to order that I propose 
to all the governments who have accredited minis- 
ters at his court the meeting of a conference which 
should occupy itself with this great problem. 

" This conference, by the help of God, would be 
a happy presage of the century now about to be- 



The Peace Circular 479 

gin. It would converge in one focus all the efforts 
of all the States which sincerely desire that the 
great conception of universal peace should triumph 
over the elements of strife and discord. It would 
at the same time, by formal union, cement an 
agreement among the nations on those principles 
of equity and right on which rest the security of 
governments and the progress of peoples." 

Observe, now, these are the words of a man or 
of men who have read the important treaties of 
twenty years. These men tell us that all these 
treaties embody some wish or plan for permanent 
peace. In quite wide conversation with many 
people who ridicule them, I have not met one per- 
son who has taken the precaution to follow that 
example in reading these treaties. 

/ do meet every day persons who make the reply 
dictated by the somewhat hasty slang of our time, 
and are satisfied to say, " The czar lies." 

I am not, myself, in the habit of ascribing the 
worst motives to any man, when he professes other 
motives. If, as the Prayer Book has it, a man 
profess and call himself a Christian, I call him so, 
too. And, if an emperor tells me that twenty 
years have taught him this or that, I believe it is so 
till some one can prove the contrary. But in this 
case we need not discuss his motives. Happily, 
the conference proposed by him has been agreed 
upon by all the great powers addressed. Lord 
Salisbury's magnificent letter is even stronger than 
the czar's in its statement of a great necessity 



480 . Sixty Years 

and a noble hope. If the czar have bent from his 
throne, as I am asked to behcve, to mumble out a 
coward's He, it is but one instance more where 
Satan has served the servants of the Lord. 

The czar's word once spoken cannot be un- 
spoken. This conference has been called, and will 
be held. What Isaiah looked forward to will come 
to pass. What Henri IV died for will come to 
pass. What William Pcnn begged for will come 
to pass. What Immanuel Kant demanded will 
come to pass. That is to say, men, representing 
nations, with authority given them to confer on 
what is possible, will enter one room, to make for 
the next century some plan for the maintenance of 
permanent peace. So many ra}'s will be " united 
in one focus," 

There is, as I intimated, a tragic interest, as one 
remembers that we were almost at this point three 
centuries ago. This great proposal of the czar's 
recalls, at once, the memory of what Henri Ouatre 
and Sully and Elizabeth and Burleigh called 
the " Great Design." Successful at every point, 
Henri, at the head of France, proposed the 
" Great Design." It was a design by which the 
fifteen States of Europe should unite in one per- 
manent council for the mutual preservation of 
peace. I never heard any one say that Henri 
swung on rainbows or played with fancies. Men 
say he is the greatest monarch of three centuries, 
Frederic and Napoleon not excepted. I do not 
hear men call his minister Sully a dreamer or a 



The Peace Circular 481 

lazy poet. Rather I hear him called the first 
statesman of five centuries. These men prepared 
the " Great Design." They submitted it to Eliza- 
beth just after she had crushed the Armada. She 
and her ministers, such men as Burleigh and Wal- 
singham, agreed to it, and improved it. They 
proposed it to the other States of Europe, with the 
eloquence of sovereigns who had armaments be- 
hind them. All but one of these States fell into 
the " Great Design." Yes, and Henri was no such 
dreamer, but he meant to compel by force the 
Emperor of Germany to fall into line with the 
rest. It was at that moment that tyranny and 
bigotry used their one weapon, and the dagger of 
Ravaillac pierced the heart which was throbbing 
with the hope of universal peace for Europe. 

It is not amiss to go back three centuries to 
learn that a design like this is not unfamiliar to 
statesmen and to soldiers. 

But in America we need no such examples. 
America is the great example. The United States 
of America is the great peace society of history. 
Thirteen little States unite. Because they unite, 
in one century's time they make the strongest em- 
pire in the world. What is the secret of their 
peace, of their prosperity? There are forty-five 
States, after a century, knit together as one, " made 
perfect in one," as the Saviour prayed, — E pluri- 
bus icfumi, as our fathers chose our motto. For 
one hundred and ten years — with one wretched 

31 



482 Sixty Years 

exception, which is not an exception — these 
States have been at peace. Think of it ! Thir- 
teen bankrupt, war-worn, jealous little provinces 
stretched, starving, along the sands of the Western 
Atlantic. Thirteen States, different in origin, in 
interests, in religion, in commerce, in habits of 
life, in education. Why do they not quarrel and 
fight, as the little States of Germany have done, as 
the provinces of France and Spain, as the duchies 
of Italy, always warring and wrangling? Why 
for one hundred and six years peace, absolute 
peace? 

Why, there have been questions of boundary, 
since my own memory, such as have convulsed 
Europe and South America a hundred times in 
two centuries, such as are breeding war in the 
world to-day. Between Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island, between Iowa and Missouri, have been such 
questions. And yet men have already forgotten 
that they ever existed. Why do we not know of 
wars about them, as those which convulsed Italy 
till our own time? Because the wisdom of the 
Fathers, in the providence of God, under the gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ, created 

A Permanent Tribunal, 
A Supreme Court, 

which should hear all such questions, and decide 
them without appeal to arms. A supreme court, 
— supreme, indeed! Higher than president. 
Higher than senates or assemblies. Higher than 



The Peace Circular 483 

governors or councils or separate States. It 
speaks. Men hear, and they obey. 

It is to the infinite credit of the lawyers of the 
world that they see the possibilities of a supreme 
court which shall be the arbiter thus in the quar- 
rels of nations. I think we owe to Henri or to 
Sully the phrase the " United States of Europe." 
It is to the great lawyers of our own time that Ave 
owe practical plans, the possibilities for the per- 
majient tribunal, the supreme court of Christendom. 

Of twenty plans for a permanent tribunal which 
will be laid before this conference, — where at last 
such plans can be considered, — that which now 
has the highest sanction is that wrought out by 
the Bar Association of this State. It was drawn 
up by a special committee of the distinguished 
lawyers of the city of New York after careful con- 
sultation. They intrusted the draft of their pro- 
posal to Mr. W. Martin Jones, of Rochester, and 
Mr. Walter S. Logan, of this city. It received the 
indorsement of the whole committee, most or all 
of whom are known by those to whom I speak. 
Let me repeat the names of Mr. Veeder, the chair- 
man ; of the two gentlemen whom I have named ; 
of Messrs. Rogers of Buffalo, Gilbert of Malone, 
Deshon and Whittaker of this city; of Messrs. 
Robertson and Davison. When I say that Mr. 
Chauncey Depew and Professor Moore are advis- 
ory members of the committee, I have certainly 
named persons whom you do not think of gener- 
ally as swinging upon rainbows, or as lying in 



484 Sixty Years 

hammocks writing sonnets to their mistresses' eye- 
brows. I think, if any one of us here had impor- 
tant business in hand, he would be glad if he could 
enlist Mr. Depew, Mr. Logan, or any of these 
gentlemen in his business. This committee pre- 
pared a plan which received the approval — unan- 
imous or almost unanimous — of the full meeting 
of the association. They addressed it to the Pres- 
ident of the United States. Mr. Cleveland and 
Mr. Olney both expressed interest in the project 
and proposition. 

The plan is so simple that it does not need a 
long statement, and I will not read it here. It 
proposes that, if nine nations can be induced to 
combine in the great combination, the highest 
court of each one of them shall be empowered 
to name one of its own members for life as a per- 
manent member of the great national tribunal. 
If only two nations or three agree to the plan, it 
can begin. 

These lawyers are practical men who do not 
mean to compel a nation to appear before the 
tribunal any more than you compel a man, a pri- 
vate citizen, to come to law, if he does not want to. 
They do propose, as one of the wisest and wittiest 
said to me not long ago, to " hang up their shin- 
gle," and write on it the words, " International 
Justice administered here." 

A court to consist of two nations, or three, or 
of nine, would be looked upon with a certain 
doubt. The least important cases would be sub- 



The Peace Circular 485 

mitted to it first Some question as to whether 
there shall be a seal left in the world, or a seal-skin 
sack for our grand-daughters to wear in 1950, 
would be submitted to it. The diplomats of Russia, 
England, Canada, and the United States, under 
great pressure, have not succeeded in determining 
in thirty years whether this interesting race of ani- 
mals — our nearest kin, as Mr. Darwin has it — 
shall exist a century longer. If there were this 
international court, the diplomats would be glad 
to turn over to it for an answer the questions 
which are involved. Or, for a good instance, the 
question whether a lobster be a fish or not, — a 
question which the newspapers told us six weeks 
ago was going to bring the nations of England and 
France into collision. 

As the central tribunal decided such lesser ques- 
tions, it would be gaining prestige and authority. 
It would have a right to call for witnesses, perhaps 
from all parts of the w^orld, and for experts on 
questions of science; and it would decide then, 
and on such a decision the nations of the world 
would wait. I do not say they would always obey, 
but here would be time given for consideration ; 
and the opinion of a board of honor, integrity, and 
impartiality, would be very difficult for any nation 
to evade. 

Let me suppose that in the harbor of one nation 
the war-ship of another should be destroyed by 
some explosion. Let me suppose that such a per- 
manent tribunal as the Bar Association proposes 



486 Sixty Years 

had been in existence, under favorable prestige, 
for ten or twenty years. Does any one doubt 
that to such a tribunal both nations thus involved 
would gladly have referred all the questions of 
the duties, effects, and responsibilities of the two 
nations concerned? 

I speak with some care of the power of this 
Supreme Court to compel the attendance of wit- 
nesses, because even in great international arbitra- 
tions there is, in practice, no such power. In the 
eighty-four years since the Treaty of Vienna, there 
have been more than eighty-four cases where ques- 
tions in contention were decided by special boards 
of arbitration. So much have we gained, and we 
may thank God for the gift. Eighty-four wars 
prevented for the nations involved ! So many 
years of peace where there might have been years 
of bloodshed. But — it is a pity to have to say it 
— each one of these courts of arbitration has been 
dissolved as soon as it has done its work. The 
great tribunal of Geneva, which decided the " Ala- 
bama claims," may be spoken of with the highest 
respect as perhaps the most distinguished tribunal 
which has existed in centuries. The character of 
the judges, their learning and ability, the well- 
earned distinction of the counsel, the importance 
of the questions at issue, all gave to the decisions 
of this court the greatest interest. The court made 
its decision, and the nations obeyed ; and then this 
distinguished court dissolved, its powers melted 
into thin air, it was nowhere. It had no precedents 



The Peace Circular 487 

to govern it, I might say it had no future before 
it ; and it had no power to call a witness to testify- 
as to the expense of a pin, though the witness lived 
in the building in which the court was sitting. It 
was obliged to act upon the statements put in by 
the respective governments. It could hardly in- 
quire where they received their information. It 
could not test that information by cross-examina- 
tion or by any additional testimony. Indeed, the 
tribunal may be compared to the simple arrange- 
ments of the frontier, where two quarrelling neigh- 
bors agree to " leave out their case to men," and 
where these men, poor fellows, cannot summon a 
witness, perhaps cannot order the production of a 
title, and can ask for no information but that which 
the prejudiced parties give them. 

In place of this the Bar Association proposes a 
Permanent Tribunal, to be in session from the first 
moment of one century to the last moment of the 
next, ready to hear any nation which wishes to 
bring its questions for decision, to hear the argu- 
ments of their counsel, to possess itself of all the 
facts, and then, without prejudice, to decide. 

Such is the great opportunity which is given to 
the next century, — a presage, as the czar says so 
well, for the beginning of the century new-born. 

As Americans, we may well be proud that a 
commission of our most distinguished lawyers have 
connected themselves with the details which treat 
of such a possibihty. It ought to be said that 



488 Sixty Years 

the great lawyers always understand and recognize 
such possibilities. I am tempted to read to you 
a part of the magnificent speech of Mr. Chauncey 
Depew when he gave his approval to the plan 
of the Bar Association as between England and 
America. 

He speaks of the lawyers of Charles I's time, 
and of their leadership in that advance which 
England and the world made in the English rebel- 
lion and revolution. " We remember that, even 
in the days of almost universal assent to the divine 
authority of kings, Justice Coke could boldly chal- 
lenge and check the autocratic Charles with the 
judgment that the law was superior to the will of 
the sovereign. Christian teachings and evolution 
of two thousand years, and the slow and laborious 
development of the principles of justice and judg- 
ment by proof, demand this crowning triumph of 
ages of sacrifice and struggle. The closing of the 
nineteenth, the most beneficent and progressive of 
centuries, would be made glorious by giving to the 
twentieth this rich lesson and guide for the growth 
of its humanities and the preservation and perpe- 
tuity of civilization and liberty." 

As Americans, I say that we are proud that such 
an initiative should be given by the great lawyers 
of our own country. But, in truth, as I have said 
already, the American Union is itself an object- 
lesson, showing what a " supreme tribunal " is. 
It is an example of authority to examine and to 
decide the questions which arise between so many 



The Peace Circular 489 

States, stretching from ocean to ocean, among 
men of every pursuit and of different interests and 
all religions. Thus has the supreme tribunal 
of America shown to the world what is possible 
in maintaining the peace of " the United States of 
America." With this object-lesson, we are able to 
make a step forward, which shall lead to what 
Henri IV called " the United States of Europe," 
and to what we will yet call, not the United States of 
Europe, but the " United States of Christendom." 
And as Christian men and women, as we read 
every prophecy of the past, we have a right to 
look forward with the eye of those who believe 
that the good God made of one blood " all races 
of men." We see the prophecy of the past accom- 
plishing itself more and more distinctly, as every 
year comes forward of what we now call the future. 
More and more confidently do we thank God that 
our children, if not we ourselves, shall live in the 
century 

" Where the common sense of most shall hold a fretful world 
in awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in Universal 
Law." 

" Earth, wise from out the foolish past. 
Shall peradventure hail at last 
The advent of that morn divine, 
When nations shall like forests grow, 
Wherein the oak hates not the pine. 
Nor birches wish the cedars woe ; 
But all in their unlikeness blend, 
Confederate to one golden end." 



MATUNUCK 

[That the reader may better understand where in summer life 
the most of these sketches are written — I print here a paper 
originally published in the Outlook. 

At the beginning of this volume is a picture, from the Pond, of 
the Red House, — which has been my summer home since 1S73. 

E. E. H.] 

MY SUMMER HOME ON THE PIAZZA 



" If you do not talk in riddles ! " 

" No one talks in riddles," I said. " We talk 
the language of the country. If you do not under- 
stand that, it is not our fault." 

" But just now you called this road Ben Frank- 
lin's road, and I am sure that yesterday somebody 
called it Queen Anne's road. What had Ben 
Franklin to do with Queen Anne? " 

" He had this much to do with her, that he rode 
over the highway which became a highway under 
her rule. Will you please to remember that you 
are in Kingstown, and that Kingstown is so called 
because it is a principal part of the King's province? 
Will you please to remember, in your rank democ- 
racy, that you and yours once lived under a king, 
and were loyal to him? Now this king, his name 
it was Charles the Second, and he left no children. 
But he did leave a brother, and his brother acted 



Matunuck 49 1 

very badly, and was sent about his business, as 
perhaps you have heard. And he left a daughter, 
as perhaps you have heard, and she and her hus- 
band v/ere king and queen, as perhaps you have 
heard. And they died without any child, but this 
ex-king had another daughter, as perhaps you have 
heard. And her name it was Anne, and she reigned, 
and reigned to the glory of the Protestant suc- 
cession, as perhaps you have heard. Now it was 
in her day and generation that the road became 
the Queen's Road, and we call it affectionately the 
Queen's Road until this day." 

" You say it ' became.' Pray, what was it 
before ? " 

" What was it before .-' Ask Robert, yonder. 
He will tell you, as he told me the other day, that 
it was the Indian's trail ' when they went from New 
York to Boston.' It is true that Boston and New 
York existed only potentially, as my Presbyterian 
friends would say. But the trail existed, and it 
was predestined that the trail should go from 
Boston to New York, and from Boston to New 
York it goes now. Now, Queen Anne, or the peo- 
ple who did her work, understood that there must 
be a road from Boston to New York, and they took 
the old Indian trail. Now, this Indian trail wound 
along so far inland that they did not have to swim 
when they came to the locks or inlets like Perch 
Cove yonder, or Trustem's Bay below here; and, 
on the other hand, it kept as near the sea as it 
might, so that they should not have to toil over 



492 Sixty Years 

these hills which were left that fine day when the 
second glacial wave receded." 

" Glacial wave receded? You talk as if you 
were present at the foundation of the world ! " 

" No, I was not present; but if you had gone to 
Oberhn and studied New Testament Greek with 
Dr. Wright — and you might have done a great 
deal worse — and caught him off hours or on a 
holiday, he would have told you that the second 
glacial wave stopped here, and left this very hill 
that you are sitting on, among other things. And 
it left a great deal of rough country, as you shall 
see when you go to walk with us to-morrow. Now, 
these Indians had some sense, and when they were 
walking from Boston to New York — that is, from 
the possible Boston to the possible New York — 
they kept off the hills as well as they could, and, 
as I said, they kept off the sea as well as they 
could. So they made the road which now goes 
from the Newport ferry south and west till it be- 
comes the Bowery." 

The next question was, " Pray, what has this to 
do with Dr. Franklin? " To which the answer was 
evident: — 

" Ben Franklin organized the American post- 
office. Now, the American post-office had no route 
more important than the route from Boston to 
New York. Accordingly, Ben Franklin arranged 
that a man called a post-rider should leave the 
ferry yonder, beyond Tower Hill, and should ride 
with such letters as the merchants of Boston could 



Matunuck 493 

send down to Newport, and as the Newport post- 
master had sent across the ferry, till he came into 
Connecticut, and so till he came to your grand 
Bowery, and delivered all these letters in New 
York. For all which the country was more obliged 
to Ben Franklin than it knew ; for probably in that 
arrangement of his was the real beginning of the 
union of which we are all so proud of to-day. 
What is perhaps more to the purpose, when Ben 
Franklin came on occasionally to visit his old 
mother, he came by this road. When he went, 
he went in a little sloop by water from Providence 
to New York. But that passage was a long one, 
and in after days he w^as much more in the habit 
of coming by land. There are proud traditions in 
the better houses between here and New York of 
his visits at one or the other as he came on. So 
it is that somewhere between here and New Haven 
is placed the traditional story of Ben Franklin's 
horse and the oysters." 

" Why, what has a horse to do with oysters?" 
said Polly, who up to this time had only been 
watching humming-birds, and was quite indifferent 
to this grave historical conversation. 

" That the ballad shall tell you, Polly. Oliver, 
here, will repeat it to you. I made him learn it 
for * a piece ' at school." 

So Oliver repeated the words : — 

" Franklin one night, cold freezing to the skin, 
Stopped on his journey at a public inn ; 



494 Sixty Years 

Rejoiced perceives the kindling flames arise ; 
But, luckless sage, he sees with distant eyes 
A motley crew monopolize the heat — 
Each firm as Banquo's ghost retains his seat. 

" • Ho ! ' cries the Doctor, never at a loss ; 

' Landlord, a peck of oysters for my horse ! ' 

' Your horse eat oysters ? ' cries the wondering host. 

' Give him a peck ; you '11 see they won't be lost.' 

The crowd, astonished, rush into the stall — 

' A horse eat oysters — what ! — with shells and all ! ' 

" Meanwhile our traveller, as the rest retire, 

Picks the best seat at the deserted fire — 

A place convenient for the cunning elf 

To roast his 03'Sters, and to warm himself. 

The host returned : ' Your horse won't eat them, sir.' 

' Won't eat good oysters ? he 's a simple cur. 

I know who will,' he adds, in merry mood. 

' Hand them to me ; a horse don't know what 's good ! ' " 

" I am fond of saying that this all happened at 
Willow Dell yonder. For, a hundred and thirty 
years ago, when Franklin was coming and going 
here, Willow Dell was a snug house of entertain- 
ment, where the hospitable people took care of 
travellers. You can see by the curve at the door 
to this day how the horses swept up there, and I 
remember when the old tavern stable was standing." 
" Well, is the story true, then, grandpapa ? " 
" My dear child, it ought to be true by this 
time, for it has been told for at least two thousand 
years. They tell me something of the sort is told 
in the ' Gesta Romanorum,' which is fourteen 
hundred years old, and that it can be traced back 



Matunuck 495 

from that into Greek literature. But Franklin was 
well read, and I do not see why he should not 
have tried the experiment as they tried it. I tried 
to find who wrote th::: ballad which Oliver has just 
repeated to you, and I could get no farther back 
than 1 81 7, when it appeared in the Connecticut 
Cotcrant, in which a good many good things have 
appeared, even before Mr, Warner's day. But our 
local version here is more rollicking: — 

" It was Mr. Benjamin Franklin, a-carr3-ing of the mail, 

(Sing ho, for the tallow-chandler's brother.) 
He had to be at Newport Friday morning without fail, 

(Sing rather, t'other, pother, fuss and bother.) 
When passing Trustom Pond, as he rode with might and 

main, 
He was soaked to the skin by the thunder and the rain ; 
And when he came to Dead Man's Brook his pony stumbled 

in, 
And tumbled Mr. Franklin off and soaked him through 
again. 
(Sing ho, for the tallow-chandler's mother.) 

" ' Speed up,' he cried, • and bring me to the Inn at Willow 
Dell ; ' 
(Sing ho, for the tallow-chandler's cousin.) 
' Ben Seegar there shall give you oats, and Hiram groom 
you well.' 
(Sing ten, eleven, twelve, a baker's dozen.) 
So quick they strode along the road, and here he entered in, 
But first, of course, he left his horse all wetted to the skin. 
But lo ! so many people were around the landlord's fire 
That he was forced to stand outside, and could n't come no 
nigher. 
(Sing five and four and two and one 's a dozen.) 



496 Sixty Years 

" ' Good friend,' said I\Ir. Franklin, as if it were of course, 

(Sing Trustom Bay and lobster-claw and clam-shell,) 
' I wish that you would give a peck of oysters to my horse.' 

(Sing lobster-claw and pickerel and clam-shell.) 
The landlord heard without a word, and quick as he was 

able, 
He shelled the fish and took the dish of oysters to the stable ! 
And with surprise in all their eyes, the people left the 

stranger, 
And crossed the yard in tempest hard to crowd around the 

manger. 
Ben Franklin he cared not to see, but took the warmest seat. 
And hung his coat above the fire and sat and dried his feet. 
(Sing centipede and crocodile and bomb-shell.) 

" Five minutes more and through the door came Mr. Land- 
lord swearing, 
(Sing OHver, Tom Nopes, and Benjamin Seegar.) 

And after him came all the folks a-wondering and a-staring, 
(Sing Oliver, Queen Moll, and Colonel Wager.) 

' Your horse won't touch the oysters, sir, altho' they 're fresh 
and new, sir.' 

'He won't?' asked Mr. Franklin; 'that's no offence to 
you, sir. 

You see he does n't know what's good; but if he don't I do, 
sir ! ' 
(Sing rheumatiz and gout and shaking ager.) 

' If he had tried your oysters fried he might not then refuse 
'em; 

But I will sit and toast my feet while Mistress Bowers stews 
'em.' 

"And we have a local version as well of Queen 
Anne's taking hold of the Indian road. I am 
afraid, however, it is not much more authentic than 
the Franklin story. For as you will see when I 
read it to you, it introduces a son of Roger Wil- 



Matunuck 497 

Hams, who is a purely mythical person. All the 
same, it gives a good enough description of the 
fight which took place around the poor Queen's 
bed when the Catholic Church on the one side and 
the English Church on the other were fighting for 
the possession of her soul : — 

" Old Queen Anne, she lay a-dying, 

Oh, sad to see, 
On her silver bedstead lying, 
While the golden sands are flying, 

Ah, weary me ! 

" On her right the priest is kneeling. 

With his Latin prayer 
To the queen of heaven appealing, 
That this queen, whose life is stealing 
Far from earth or earthly feeling. 

May quickly name her heir. 

*' At her left the bishop praying, 

And the words he said : 
' Recollect, Great God, the wonder 
When her fleets with bolt of thunder 
Drove the wicked Papists under. 

And their armies fled.' 

" Sudden steps surprise the palace ! — 
Vain the sentry at the wall is; — 
The Messenger upsets the chalice ! — 

Roger Williams' son 
Scornfully upsets the chalice, 
And defies the churchman's malice. 
He has words to cheer the dying 
On her silver bedstead lying. 
Hear him in her chamber crying 

That her work is done. 
32 



498 Sixty Years 

*' O'er the dying queen he bended, 
Screaming in her ear, 

• Great Queen Anne, your road is mended, 
From the floods the track 's defended, 
All your money is expended, 

But the task has been well ended, 
And the road is there. 

" ' From Block-house on Tower Hill ' 
(Screaming in her ear), 

• By Willow Dell to Perryville, 
By Loisha's home to Cross's Mill, 
Queen Anne's road is built with skill, — 

Tell me if you hear ! ' 

" See the Queen's dim eyeballs glisten, 
Rising in her bed ; 
How her frail form bends to listen 
To the words he said. 

• Williams, say those words again ! 
Those are words that conquer pain. 
All the work explain — explain — 
Say again — say — say — again — ' 

And the Queen is dead. 

" Rose the bishop from his kneeling. 
Ceased the priest from his appealing 

To the Holy Rood, 
Vain was Satan's thunderous levin, 
To her failure pardon's given. 
For Queen Anne has gone to heaven 

On the old Queen's Road." 

Polly is just at the age when young people think 
that the world hinges on its poetry, as perhaps it 
does. And at this point she asked if the history of 
the Queen's Road could all be told in ballads. For 



Matunuck 499 

her part, she believed that was the proper way to 
tell a story- 

I could only give her, for her present comfort, 
the ballad of Anne Hutchinson, also from the pen 
of a local poet : — 

ANN Hutchinson's exile 

" Home, home — where 's my baby's home ? 

Here we seek, there we seek, my baby's home to find. 
Come, come, come, my baby, come ! 
We found her home, we lost her home, and home is far 
behind. 

Come, my baby, come ! 
Find my baby's home! " 

The baby clings, the mother sings, the pony stumbles on ; 
The father leads the beast along the tangled, muddy way ; 
The boys and girls trail on behind ; the sun will soon be 
gone. 
And starlight bright will take again the place of sunny 
day. 
" Home, home — where 's my baby's home? 

Here we seek, there we seek, my baby's home to find. 
Come, come, come, my baby, come ! 

We found her home, we lost her home, and home is far 
behind. 

Come, my baby, come ! 
Find my baby's home ! " 

The sun goes down behind the lake, the night fogs gather 
chill. 
The children's clothes are torn, and the children's feet 
are sore. 
"Keep on, my boys ; keep on, my girls, till all have passed 
the hill, 
Then ho, my girls, and ho, my boys, for fire and sleep 
once more ! " 



500 Sixty Years 

And all the time she sings to the baby on her breast : 
" Home, my darling, sleep, my darling, find a place for rest; 
Who gives the fox his burrow will give my bird a nest- 
Come, my baby, come ! 
Find my baby's home ! " 

He lifts the mother from the beast, the hemlock boughs 
they spread, 
And make the baby's cradle sweet with fern leaves and 
with bays. 
The baby and her mother are resting on their bed, 
He strikes the flint, he blows the spark, and sets the 
twigs ablaze. 

"Sleep, my child, sleep, my child! 
Baby, find her rest, 
Here beneath the gracious skies, upon her father's breast ; 
Who gives the fox his burrow will give my bird her rest. 
Come, come, with her mother, come ! 
Home, home, find my baby's home ! " 

The guardian stars above the trees their loving vigil keep ; 
The cricket sings her lullaby, the whippoorwill his cheer. 
The father knows his Father's arms are round them as 
they sleep; 
The mother knows that in His arms her darling need 
not fear. 
" Home, home, my baby's home is here. 
With God we seek, with God we find the place for baby's 
rest. 
Hist, my child, list, my child ! angels guard us here. 
The God of heaven is here to make and keep my birdie's 
nest. 
Home, home, here 's my baby's home ! " 

THE END 



MAR 9 1900 



